Brillig

It's still better than than the raving hordes who are stuck in the anger phase.

Two reasons: first, there's no guarantee that the price increase in order to keep it viable was a small one. Sure, a lot of people are on board with $19.99. But suppose it was $49.99? How many of you are on board with that?

Second, everyone is on board now, because doom is approaching - if NCSoft had said, prior to any of this happening, that they were raising the sub to $19.99, the forums would have exploded.

It seems unlikely that anyone would buy the property unless it contained everything. In spite of opinions to the contrary, the value of the franchise is in the ability to run the game and generate operating revenues from it. The IP is pretty much worthless in the grand scheme of things.

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.

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 chance to dump the databases. Or come back with a gun.

You couldn't even make it this far without making **** up?

Please tell me how you know Paragon employees didn't get a severance package.

Well, he didn't say it was false. He said it was a rumor. That's pretty much an information-free statement.

Isn't every scenario of why this happened a rumor?

As far as I can recall the only thing that has been commented on is the licensing scenario, regarding which BAB/TicToc has said (twice) that he hadn't heard anything about that, and Z has said (twice) is a rumor.

You might care to draw some conclusion from the fact that this is the only theory drawing comments from past and present Paragoners. Then again, I'm not sure that there's any other theory that's coherent enough to comment on.


I believe "everyone" is two people. And I'd be really happy if you could point me to anything where someone (who should actually know) comes out and says this is not true. So far, there's been no debunking.

So we're either with you or against you, eh?

F-ing Sith Lords...

It's damn ironic that the same, unwilling to see both sides, scorched earth bull that you're espousing is exactly what you claim is bad about NCSoft.

And yeah, if I buy GW2 and enjoy it, then when NCsoft shuts it down I expect I'll be laughing right alongside you, because I'll have enjoyed years of entertainment while you simmered in years of rage and bile.

Good luck with your hate-fest. Remember to have your blood pressure checked.

Yeah, I realize that. I was there on the forums when Smed pushed that reasoning and said that a huge amount of CS time was spent helping with people who got scammed in RMT transactions.

My response was simple. "You're not supposed to HELP them Smed. You're supposed to BAN them."

One of the main reasons RMT was and is such a plague is because companies are too damn wimpy to actually enforce their own rules. They'll go after the RMT company's accounts, but the buyers rarely get more than a slap on the wrist. Station Exchange was just a cop-out.

No the real reason is that MMO companies are too dumb to realize that attacking the supply doesn't work, you have to attack the demand.

The more people like this I see, the more I'm tempted to buy GW2.

Multiple copies.

Lack of imagination on your part. I can think of dozens of nightmare scenarios. That doesn't mean they're likely to happen, but there are worse things than no longer being alive.

Anyway, for the sake of the fans, it'd be good if anyone rescued the franchise, but in my eyes, SOE is evil - not for anything to do with SWG, but because of Station Exchange.

Edit: Those are some good "bad" scenarios, Leo.

That's pretty hard to establish. Or do you have inside information?

At any rate, I don't think it was making so much money that PWI would quickly recoup what they'd have to pay NCSoft to take it over.

Couple that with the fact that CO stands to get a nice boost from CoH closing, and I still fail to see how buying CoH would make any kind of economic sense for PWI.

That's a pretty big leap. How does owning TWO money-losing superhero games help them?

You have no understanding of corporate governance, I'll leave it at that.

This is possible I suppose. In fact it's pretty much their stated reason.

NCSoft doesn't care how much money a game makes in Korea, they care how much money a game makes. Now when CoH is marginal outside of Korea and practically non-existant in it, that's probably a matter of concern.

Now you're just being silly. TSW is not a very good game. It's a good game, but the metacritic average of 73 is pretty much spot on. They had some really interesting innovations, but at the same time they fumbled badly on execution and had some seriously flawed design decisions. It would never have been a WoW killer.

Correction: Nexon didn't acquire NCSoft. They bought a 14.7% stake, which gives them a lot of clout and probably a seat on the board, but they're not the ones making the decisions.

Sorry, but I don't see a VC touching this. They're not interested in the slow but steady return, they're looking for the home run.

You have gotten better at Unintentional Irony (59)!

In other words "never."

Nonprofit is not a magic shield from copyright infringement, though.