LittleDavid

Well put. That's pretty much how I feel about it; we've had a few people who sneer and jeer at anyone saying they're going to boycott NCSoft, especially those who say "a boycott won't change anything."

But really, this is all the boycott boils down to. Taking your money elsewhere. Voting with your wallet. We might not affect NCSoft's profits significantly since we're a financial drop in the bucket compared to their current star titles, but we might have a more signifcant impact in our efforts to save the game. Other people might look at this situation and think twice before giving NCSoft their money.

But the most important thing is, our money is going to other things we feel more comfortable supporting.

Other non-Korean MMOs not owned by NCSoft have been summarily killed off before, but I can't think of any reactions offhand by Korean players when a Korean MMO is shut down. Outside of Korea though, I can name some examples:

The legit, official European servers for Ragnarok Online were shut down years ago due to a disagreement with Gravity KR, which led to Gravity KR refusing to let euRO renew its license. Sort of like what people were thinking Atari/Cryptic did to NCSoft/Paragon. I know people were furious, especially since euRO's handlers were very well respected by the players, but I never heard of their playerbase trying to rescue it like the CoH community is doing.

Sega is kind of infamous for how badly it's neglected international player bases in for its Phantasy Star MMOs. That's a long story in and of itself--Phantasy Star Universe's international story can be found here if you're curious. PSU as a whole is dying off this month, though; with the release of PSO2, Sega announced this year they'd be shutting down both the remaining X-Box 360 and Japanese PC/PS2 servers. I don't know how the Japanese player base is taking it.

Also, just a few days before NCSoft killed off Paragon and City of Heroes, Gamigo announced it'd be shutting Black Prophecy down this month. That was the latest MMO by the German company Reakktor, who is responsible for earlier MMOs like Neocron and Neocron 2: Dome of York (which are still alive and kicking under other companies). I found out Reakktor actually went belly-up earlier this year. There does seem to have been a movement by players to try and rescue the company from insolvency, but they only made a Facebook page about it.

... And now I'm hearing Mark Hamill's Joker saying this, thanks to your avatar.

Lemme give this a shot!

"The Daring" Little David, once a refuse collector,
scavenged gadgets and rifles to be a stalwart protector.

The Corrupted Haruspex was a Mastermind's creation,
its mind-defiling magic is truly an abomination.

The Firekeeper's grandson took up the name Wildfire Pete,
now he'll free Praetoria by turning up the heat.

A broken soldier fights again thanks to his government handlers,
as Cerenokv E-RADS with a Defender's nuclear reactor.

Mike Jules XII, one of Portal Corp's quarries,
fights for Arachnos with his mercenary cronies.

The Hamidon's Yellow Dawn reduced heroes into martinis,
but one returned alive fused into his own Hamikini

Agreed. NCSoft's business decisions involving City of Heroes might be understandable, but that doesnt mean I have to like them, or support those kind of business decisions by giving them more of my money. City of Heroes is only the latest of MMOs NCSoft's published that they've abruptly shut down. I want to be able to play MMOs that last for the full length of their natural life span, not suddenly killed off as a "realignment of focus" on the latest new hotness.

Anyone wanna try contacting him an seeing what he thinks?

Not necessarily! When you're designing characters in Architect Entertainment, you have the option to load your character's current appearance (but not their powers or powersets). All you'd need to do is start a new mission or create a new enemy group, choose to make a custom enemy or contact, and load her in the character creator.

I was really happy to see normal map technology come to the game engine, and I was looking forward to seeing if they could redo in-game textures to take advantage of normal mapping to add detail closer to modern day graphics.

That being said ... We're getting closer every year to producing the kind of quality in real-time we have in City of Heroes' pre-rendered trailers. Especially if Euclideon goes anywhere, given some of the hands-on demos from a year back.

I would love to see an upgrade to City of Heroes, or a new version of the game, with that kind of technology.

Try using the Architect Entertainment mission editor! You won't be able to customize your powers this way, but you have a LOT more access to costume options if you unlocked them from AE. You can also save the costume designs you make there as files, just like at the Tailor or character creation screens.

We heard quite a bit from Zwillinger yesterday.

... I can't find an appropriate image or gif for me to adequately describe how I feel seeing this, but it is awesome that they're helping put the call out.

... But seriously, this is an awesome contest and I'll try getting in on this. Ain't gonna let the end of the game get me down!

A picture's worth a thousand words!

Everyone at Titan Network, thanks so much for your hard work on this. I don't think there's many MMOs where the players ever had a chance to save their characters like this, even just as a memento of their time in the game before it died.

It goes without saying, but Sentinel+ can make "sequential backups" if you rename the character file, right? That way, we can snapshot our characters as they are now, but if we play with them and make significant progress on things if the game goes down on November 30, that can be recorded?

I noticed that, too. He's very quick to challenge anything that would frame NCSoft in a negative light.

He may have a point in that, where voluntary user-submitted reviews are concerned, people are more inclined to complain when something's wrong. That's partly why I want to hear what he thinks would be reliable data on employee perceptions of NCSoft. But watching his posts of in the past few days makes me wonder.

That he's willing to even go that far to try and help rescue City of Heroes is awesome. Thank you for getting the word out to guys like him!