BrandX

Originally Posted by terrible_deli

But as for my MMO fix, I finally decided to give WoW a real chance. Maybe it's the sting of losing CoH, but I didn't want to pick up another game that has a remote chance of being canned in the next year.

Originally Posted by Mad Grim

I dislike the idea that the Coming Storm beat us. I prefer the idea that Paragon was saved/the villain took over the world. Their work finished, they moved on.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

It doesn't have to be a WoW clone for the game to be generic fantasy. I don't have to purchase Guild Wars 2 even once because it has nothing I want. The character creator is SEVERELY limited without so much as a physique slider, there's nothing in it but High Fantasy which I was sick to death of 15 years ago and all it has to brag about is "mechanics" that I really don't care for. I don't want "events," I don't want large-scale PvP and I don't want quests that send me to the same outdoor area as a zillion other people.

That doesn't make it a good game or a bad game. However, it does make Guild Wars 2 yet another Fantasy game with no aspirations beyond being Fantasy and fiddling with meta-game mechanics. About the only thing I cared for in that game was the world of the little impish Stitch people, because it kind of looks slightly sci-fi, but that's about it. That's certainly not a City of Heroes replacement. It isn't even remotely like that. Champions Online, for as terrible as that is, makes for a better City of Heroes replacement if for no reason other than it doesn't hard-code my race.

Originally Posted by Slaunyeh

I tried TERA for a seven-day trial. Then my berserker got her first armour upgrade and I was like... no. I can't do this, it's just too silly.

Sorry!

Originally Posted by CuppaManga

I did a lot of thinking about why NCSoft would just close down Paragon Studios without any warning. But if you really think about it, maybe there *was* a warning.

When Apple released Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) in mid July, a warning was posted by Zwillinger to the Mac Users forum that the NCSoft Launcher crashes on some Macs running it. Since then, nobody has been able to contact NCSoft to get a fix for it. It's like the people working on the Launcher for Mac just vanished. As it turns out, they probably did.

That clue leads me to believe that in the two months since then, NCSoft has been letting people go because it's so low on cash, it can't make payroll, and can't get a loan to fill the gap. When this past weekend came along, they made the sudden decision that to save the company (NCSoft) and be able to pays its workers, it had to take the money out of the pot feeding Paragon Studios and City of Heroes. Meaning they were all fired, and the game was to be shut down immediately.

I can only speculate from that point, somewhat gratefully perhaps, that someone working at Paragon may have begged for leniency for us players, so we would be able to have a chance to say goodbye, and talked NCSoft into giving us 3 months.


Some other semi-random thoughts I have about the contents of this thread, some good and some bad:

- SOE making a bid for City of Heroes on a holiday weekend sounds more than a little suspiciously like a wishful thinking rumor. If it's real, however, the way it plays out could be interesting.

- I would also prefer a smaller studio who would appreciate the smaller profits, or an independent Paragon Studios, but when the ship is sinking, you don't say no to any rescue.

- SOE, if it is indeed making a bid, would not spend several million to bury the City of Heroes IP when it's as good as dead already. They could just let NCSoft kill it and bury it for free.

- City of Heroes is more likely to be sold by NCSoft than any other title they killed, because it is not originally an NCSoft property, and they don't really want it. They bought it from Cryptic. That means there is no reason for them to try and protect the IP unless they already have a sequel in the works.

Originally Posted by StrykerX

The way I look at it NCSoft proved themselves to be:

A) heartless bastards

and

B) idiots

and as such I have little desire to support them in the future. Shutting down an entire studio with one day's notice? That is, quite frankly, inexcusable. It may well be common practice in large corporations, but if a lot of other heartless bastards do the same thing it does not make it any more acceptable. And shutting down a studio that was still making money was, quite bluntly, stupid in the extreme. Yes, NCSoft lost money last quarter. Boo hoo. They had a ton of one-off expenses and any sane company would simply accept the losses and wait for the investments to pay off. Instead, NCSoft apparently chose to look like they were "doing something" just to pacify investors, but any corporation that prioritizes quarterly (or annual) reports over long term profitability is stupid beyond belief. All too many of them do exactly that, but the fact is that it hurts them in the long term... and often the executives don't care, because they consider looking good and getting their fat bonuses more important than actually making the company stronger.

So bottom line... NCSoft acted like a typical greedy, stupid corporation and made a knee-jerk reaction to try to spin a bad quarterly report. Are they any worse than many other corporations? Nope... plenty of them do the same things. Except that this particular stupid knee-jerk reaction killed my favorite MMO, so I'm mad. And because I'm mad, I'm going to do my small part to screw over the corporation that pissed me off... meaning that I won't be buying any future NCSoft products and I'll be bad-mouthing them to my friends and anyone else who will listen. Not because it's the right thing to do or from some moral high ground, but because I'm mad and want payback. It's just that simple.

Originally Posted by Tenzhi

I played DCUO a great deal during beta. There were things I really liked about it (in particular, it presents a city environment that's far more impressive than the other two superhero MMOs), but I found the characters to be too fragile for my liking in the long run (I had a similar issue with Champions). I may find myself giving it and/or Champions Online another try when the superhero bug bites me. Both games are more action-oriented than CoH. I'm not sure I can take playing Champions again, though... I still have nightmares about shutting down ALL of the beacons because they're transmitting a high frequency signal that drives the Qularr insane... *twitch*

TERA (it's an acronym for The Exiled Realms of Arborea, I believe) is a fantasy action MMO. It actually works by default with the XBOX 360 and PS3 controllers. The advancement in it is pretty smooth and quick and I personally enjoy the combat, though the instanced dungeons can be difficult. It's the only fantasy MMO that I've ever advanced a character near the level cap, and I may be playing it for another month or two at least. It's not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm having fun with it. Alas, though, their forums (not the community but the forums themselves) are terrible.

Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight

Generally, it actually works out that longer sub periods are better for the companies, that's why they offer a discount on them (because even with the discount they're better). They get all the money up front (so there's no questions about it), which means they can invest it sooner, and there's a longer period before they know you might stop giving them money.

Plus, it's good for charts to say X% is really dedicated! Win-win for everyone involved (except the credit card companies, since they usually make money for every transaction).

Originally Posted by Brillig

This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen you say.

First of all, if a 747 dropped on your house (and we'll presume that you were crushed), you wouldn't say anything, you'd be dead.

Secondly, if a 747 dropped on your house, that would be a pretty rare occurrence, one difficult to predict or avoid. Online games get cancelled not infrequently, and one would thing someone with your head for numbers would have realized long ago that this game was a marginal proposition at best. If you didn't think that this happening was a significant possibility, then you had your head stuck in the sand. This is not a 747 dropping on your house, it's you walking along the railroad tracks with the headphones on. You can go on for quite a while that way, but no one is going to be surprised if you get hit by a train.

Finally, you can't kill a game. It's not alive. A more non-pejorative term would be "cancelled." Of course, then your bad analogy would make even less sense, and you wouldn't be able to raise the rabble against the "killers of CoH." Now I know this usage can be defended as vernacular. Maybe I'm giving you too much credit for choosing your words.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors

They will also actively go out of their way to assure you that your job is not in danger. The last thing they want is a mass exodus before they are ready to can everyone.

Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen

Can I have your money too?

Originally Posted by Brillig

Fact: That's how every company on the planet does layoffs. You don't tell them they're being laid off and them given them a change to dump the databases. Or come back with a gun.

Originally Posted by vulpish_one

10000!

Edited to add: 10K subs per month, assuming each signer is willing to pony up the scratch, should be enough to make a publisher at least think about the business prospects.

Originally Posted by planet_J

TW does better ST damage than SS with Stacked Rage...you'll have to explain how on earth it is you're figuring EM is better at ST DPS...as I simply don't see it. Math is math, and yours isn't adding up.

Furthermore...I would hotly debate the other sets you are contesting as well...ET is not that impressive compared to things like KOB from SS, or RA or FT from TW, or even MG from DM.

In addition, I would seriously consider you out of your mind if you said the best EM chain on a tank didn't involve Gloom in some fashion...as the rest of EM to get your ST DPS up close to the other sets would not even be anywhere near on par.

Originally Posted by Siolfir

You'll have to show your work on this one, because I flat out don't believe you that EM will beat DM, SM, or TW for single target DPS on a high recharge IO build (and this has been shown in other threads, where people did show the chains used, level or recharge, and their final results). The only time it's best for single target DPS is on SO and basic (non-set) IO builds with low global recharge, and that's only because it has ET - TF is the worst DPA of the "heavy hitting" scale 3.56 attacks by virtue of having the longest animation of any single target attack in a melee set.

Also, given that PvP damage was set to use animation time for its damage you wouldn't even have to have different animations to nerf ET for PvP, you could simply put the animation to 1 second and use the PvP formula to get the final damage and have it do the scale 4.56 in PvE.

Yes, that makes it an outlier power... but the changes to Assassin's Strike made every Stalker have a power that frequently exceeds the DPA of a 1-second ET, and it's in a set that has similar issues that people complained about the Stalker AT as a whole prior to the changes: not enough single target damage to make up for the weak AoE. Stalkers didn't get more AoE, they got better single target damage. I say just treat EM the same way.

Originally Posted by BlueBattler

It'd be awesome sometime if a Dev would appear as the Clockwork King asking to join a morality mission...

Originally Posted by JKCarrier

I'm surprised Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn't on there. We called it "the Motionless Picture" at the time, since it was two hours of crewmembers sitting on the bridge staring in awe at things.

Originally Posted by cursedsorcerer

Still kinda would like to maybe see if the Clockwork King could be redeemed.