Brillig
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Posts
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Joined
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One note about TSW - "servers" there don't mean much. You can talk and group across servers. The one thing you can't do is go to the instanced PvP areas across servers, those are server specific.
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Please stop quoting the troll.
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Quote:Just use ignore. It's kind of pathetic that even now some people gotta be trolls, but it's even more worthless to engage with them now.Originally Posted by Scythus
I'm curious, do you actually believe we're standing in a line or were you unable to come up with with rebuttal that made sense? Because the former implies that you are more mentally insane than I am, and the latter implies that you have no cognitive function whatsoever. -
Quote:Generally speaking, you get your severance package after signing an agreement *not* to pull stunts like that.Originally Posted by Nos482
What are they gonna do? Fire him?
It's a crap economy. These folks need their severance. -
Quote:Ok, take your racism and shove it, please.Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
Aion cost them too much, but the Asian mentality in business prevents them from saying it was a bad idea, after they had bigged it up so much.
So yeah Aion can't die.
And since Asians hate the west, can you guess what would have to die instead? -
I don't know how much motivation I have to play.
I've got store points that need spending though... -
Quote:You and I see it that way. But a company like NCSoft may prefer to piss off a few consumers rather than engage in mudslinging with another company that they may need to partner with in the future.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
And if the rumor is true, then NCSoft should have said that when they made the announcement to us. Simply knowing who delivered the dickshot would put the focus where it belonged. On PW/Cryptic.
Doing it this way they've only hurt themselves. -
Quote:Actually, what he said was that he wasn't aware of a term on the license agreement.Originally Posted by Thor's Assassin
Yeah Bab's debunked this:
That's a pretty long way from 'debunking.' -
Quote:Unfortunately, "top 5 rated" doesn't mean "top 5 revenue."Originally Posted by Primal_Dark
City of Heroes is still, after over 8 years, one of the top 5 rated games on MMORPG.com It's got a loyal fan base, an active community and plenty of life left for content. Guess I'm just a little boggled by all this, especially since it seemed things were going so well.
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Quote:Oh come on. Layoffs almost always happen without warning. Also I'd point out that the Paragon staff that have been posting haven't been raging. It's entirely possible that they knew this could happen.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
The hate is mainly for the way the announcement has been made with no explanation at all as to why, and to how PS was laid off with no warning.
I guess Koreans don't know the rule about not laying people off on a Friday though. -
Quote:To answer your questions (with my own speculation), this is the kind of thing that happens where NCSoft and PWE are negotiating over the terms of a license extension, things are going fine, then, at the 11th hour, something happens. Maybe PWE wants something that NCSoft can't give.Originally Posted by Starsman
That rumor makes a LOT of sense... I am aware at least of part of it but not about the span of the lease or a possible refusal to renew.... where did you read it? Not sure why it would be a reason to fire the entire staff overnight... although the licensing may had also been the force to kill all income generated by the game... "we allow you a 2 month transition window but no income can be generated during that window" would be enough to force a studio shutdown...
So then NCSoft has a big problem. They've been making plans all along thinking that the license would get renewed, and now they have to shut down the game in three months. First thing to do, you stop the bleeding (i.e. development work on the engine that you can't use anymore). Then you try to make the best lemonade you can. Which unfortunately means axing Paragon, since the thing they know how to do isn't part of the future.
Sucks. Sucks in a thousand ways.
Happens in business a lot. -
Too soon.
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Quote:For a year like this, he probably has a couple of spares, just ready to fill in the names.Originally Posted by JayboH
This guy always makes comics on the announcement of an MMO dying by using a bug zapper scenario, and he whipped this thing up immediately.
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Quote:Didn't know that. Horizons isn't an emulator though, it's the original code.Originally Posted by Starsman
So is Shadowbane.
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Ironically, Horizons is still alive, after a fashion.
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Quote:Nice work - I think this is sounding more plausible by the minute.Originally Posted by Sylph_Knight
I did some digging and I think I found out why the game is being shut down. This is all based on prior public knowledge and some conjecture, so I apologize if this is inaccurate.
Cryptic Studios kept the original rights and engine when they separated from NCSoft and sold a 5-year licence to the company. Those 5 years are now up, and since that time Cryptic Studios has developed Champions Online, been bought out by Atari, which was itself bought out by Perfect World. Seeing how Perfect World is another Korean Developer with a Super Hero MMO of its own, it clearly doesn't want competition. Therefore, they will not sell the renewal licence to NCSoft or have made the licence fees too high for profitability.
Now that this is out of the way, I want to thank everyone I have ever had the pleasure of playing with in City of Heroes. I grew up with the game and matured greatly because of your support. You defined much of who I am today. I hope you all find happiness down the road and never stop believing in your Justice.
I'd also like to point out that since Cryptic only licensed the engine rather than selling it to NCSoft, those inclined can blame this whole situation on Jack!
(I keed) -
Quote:You were the one who asked "how hard can it be?"Originally Posted by MisterD
Oh go away ******. One thing I wont miss, twits like you posting.
Now you have the answer. Very very hard.
Name-calling won't make you any smarter. -
Quote:If you're going to win the lottery, then don't buy the game, buy NCSoft. Then you can lay the executives off. In very inventive ways.Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
So my next step is to win the lottery, buy the game, and tell NCsoft to shove it.
Of course, the playerbase may not WANT me in charge, but hey, we all have to make sacrifices.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite -
Quote:I like how you condense a huge development project to "boom, done."Originally Posted by MisterD
Exactly.
HOW much of the server interaction data do we actually need to play?
Look at the GTA games..they are huge, with just as detailed cities and NPCs, if not more. Take away unused zones..the shard, pvp zones, crap like boomtown etc, make the system ONLY add npcs to the zone your currently in..boom, done. I am sure more PCs could handle one zone..especially if going into a mission 'stopped' all the zone action.
Can I possibly convince you to become the president of the United States? -
Quote:Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment. I don't think PWE would be interested in buying back CoH, considering they spent a bunch of money and time to buy Champions Online and integrate it with PWE already.Originally Posted by Caulderone
I'm completely and totally bummed out by this news. I haz a sad
The above quotes are a very good question. If the license is expiring, could Cryptic put it back up and running? Is that too much to hope for?
Indeed, it's entirely possible that if this was due to the license expiring, that PWE's terms were unacceptable to NCSoft, in order to produce exactly this result.
We'll probably never know though. -
Quote:It's not just the server connection, it's the server software. Not everyone has a dozen machines in their house they could use to run the server software.Originally Posted by MisterD
Well how hard can it be? All the game data is on 'our' hard drives right? All the data sent between is for the combat data, weather data, npcs in zones? Take out the server connection, and its just you.
I'm just saying..wouldn't it make sense, to get the LAST bit of money from players? And give them something to take away. -
TSW has a three day free trial now.
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Quote:Not as much as you might think - still you're right that a cloud provider is the obvious choice for a project like this.Originally Posted by OneFrigidWitch
Interestingly, the real cost is not the "server maintenance guy", server space,or hardware... It is the cost of bandwidth, which can run in the tens to hundreds of $k a month. Bandwidth providers such as the MS cloud or Amazon cloud might be very viable options, if the IP can be purchased. Buying off-the-wire from a major bandwidth provider is not going to be very likely.
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that running COH would cost about 0.1 cent per player-hour in AWS for bandwidth.
At $15/month, even a player that played a ten hours a day is only costing $0.30 in bandwidth, or 2% of revenue. -
Thank you Zwill.
Best of luck wherever you land. -
Quote:It's actually not that strange, if you look at their recent financials.Originally Posted by LittleDavid
It's kind of funny that they'd take the axe to City of Heroes when they were blaming Aion for their financial problems, though. Unless Aion is also getting killed off ...
CoH did about $2.5M in the last quarter, pretty much the same as the quarter before it, and the quarter before that, etc...
AION did about $33M in the same quarter, as opposed to $47M in the previous quarter.
In other words, CoH was a marginal proposition that was going to continue to be a marginal proposition. AION, on the other hand, they probably believe they can nurse into a big rebound.