Rubberlad

TSW is not buggy.

As many have said in their forums and here, the bugginess is with the end-user who isn't comfortable or in the mood to experiment with the abilities wheel or solve all the mysteries the game has to offer.

I've been playing TSW since July and I love it. It's not CoH but its slowly getting there. The devs are becoming more conscientious about the players' need for a better character creator and there are ways to style up and be your own avatar while you play. The game environment is amazing -- especially when you get to Egypt. Its definitely one of a kind and Funcom is fully committed to growing it. I'd highly recommend it for those who are willing to embrace something new --- and smart.

I'm not on Facebook anymore (haven't been since May). Nor am I on Twitter but if folks want to take the initiative and advertise across the mediums, that'd be great!

Sorry, I corrected the subject thread. I'm trying to think clearly but the tears aren't helping.

--- and I just lost it in the store. This bewildered clerk with frizzy orange hair came over and asked if I was alright, and I was like, yeah I'm fine, sorry I just lost one of my best friends last night and she gave me hug. Its really funny how this game keeps catching me off guard.


Melissa, you are a wonderful talent, a great leader and just a damn good soul. I apologize if I ever gave you or any of the devs a rough time over the years. I blame immaturity and creative differences but damn never in a million years did I think logging out even for a month could somehow lead to this. I'm so sorry if anything I said or did helped to put you guys out of a job. I'm a firm believer that every little bit counts and I'm glad to see I was a right (although I'm so damn sorry I didn't do more to help).

****, I'm crying again. Somebody get me a damn tissue, huh?

Alright, that's enough.

I was open, honest, apologetic and appreciative of your invaluable input until I saw this "you people" nonsense - and you lost me completely. You've got good information to share so please find a way to share it without talking down to folks. If you have a more reasonable and factual argument to make regarding why NCsoft pulled the plug, then please make it - but be as thoughtful, patient and down to earth as you can be without making this "you people" distinction. The last thing we need now is anyone throwing about divisive labels because they're upset that they're not being heard.


We're all shocked, we're all grieving and we're all trying to make sense of what's happening here - and why it happened. We may never get a real answer but right now all we have to go on in terms of concrete proof is NCsoft's earnings report - and the most recent report dated August 8th is the first to show an overall loss of operational profit and net income for the company and that fact *cannot* be disputed. So let's start there (because its as good as place to start as anywhere else).

Everyone in this thread has an equal voice and everyone is being heard. Now please, stop throwing a tantrum and make your case, make it plainly and use the facts available as best you can. Regardless of how you interpret those facts, please pose your argument in such a way that EVERYONE can understand and appreciate what it is you're trying to say.

We're all each other has now - so please, let's not lower ourselves to petty bickering.

Please.


Thank you.

More or less, that's the concern I have after reading the earnings report, factoring in comments made about the future of the MMO industry in Funcom's latest quarterly report, personal experience with managing acquisitions and layoffs, and having read several media reports on why the gaming industry is failing as a whole (and though I may have made the wrong assumption here and there, I'm glad I took the initiative to look up NCsoft's earnings report to discover the company was in the red rather than rely on the well-minded but still fanciful internet rumor mill to guide my thinking). I may not be the brightest bulb in the house but at least I've still got a light on.

No, in my mind, there was plenty of time (and warning signs in the past year alone) for NCsoft to take action and avoid going into the red (which may or may not have curtailed any discussion of dumping City of Heroes)... so why didn't they?

Another very good point.

Good point. The way you worded your original statement, I took it to mean that you worked for NCsoft and were sharing first-hand insight from behind the scenes. If that's truly not the case and you are not (nor ever were) an employee of NCsoft, then I apologize.

Maybe they couldn't...

Remember, just a month or so ago it was announced that Activision couldn't find anyone to take Blizzard... So if not even WoW's reputation could interest a ptoential buyer, do you really think anyone was in the market to buy a smaller, lower-performing IP like City of Heroes in comparison?

Speaking of WoW, I'd be very afraid for the Dev team working on Mists of Pandaria right now. Cause when that add-on hits the shelves, I suspect there'll be a number of layoffs over there as well... (all par for the course in the gaming industry).

You forget that there's the 3rd party vendor charged to operate the Paragon Market at a separate cost to the dev team's expenses. If the vendor's recurring costs outweighed the incoming sales, then I'd be even more surprised some changes weren't made sooner to now when the metrics went in the red.

You're right. I apologize. My bad for the hasty miscalculation. The 26% mention is erroneous.

That said, both Aion and CoH saw a decrease in 2Q 12 sales from 1Q 12 sales (Aion moreso than CoH) but Aion was still the better performer in total sales -- and it outperformed CoH by a wide margin - and yet it is still considered "weak." Based on that comment in the comment, one could assume that CoH's performance must have been considered "terrible" in comparison.

Then again considering that City of Heroes was among the lowest IPs for NCsoft in recent years, one has to ask why did it take so long for NCsoft to shut it down? If the answer isn't "It's because they went in the red this quarter" then what really prompted NCsoft's decision to shut down? There's been no real change in its overall performance from quarter to quarter in the year (it even improved peformance slightly between Q1 2012 and Q2 2012), so they must've known they were carrying deadweight... Were they letting other title's game sales carry the heavy load because NCsoft was always operating in the black?

As an investor, I personally would want to know why didn't NCsoft trim the fat on City of Heroes much sooner and avoid having to dump the IP at all? They definitely had plenty of time to do so as you say. Why wait until the company went in the red to instead dump the IP completely?

If you've got a better explanation than mine to explain this anomaly, I'd love to hear it.

Now *that's* an interesting admission... There's only one way you could know the specific timeline for sure.

The August 8th earning report would disagree with you since it says right at the top of PDF Page 5:

So despite Aion's sales outperforming CoH's by 26%, it's still considered "weak" ... That's not reason to be joyful in anyone's book. Granted there's a lot of ways to interpret why NCsoft felt this was a poor showing but its pretty clear that the word "weak" means NCsoft is viewing their glass as half empty and not half full.

I'm not suggesting any such thing. Whether it took them five minutes to decide a course of action or weeks of deliberation is irrelevant. The fact is they made the decision to cut City of Heroes loose and I personally vehemently disagree with their decision. It was the wrong course of action but right or wrong, I'm sure they felt hard-pressed to act quickly -- or else.

Even CEO's and other members of executive leadership make mistakes (they're human after all and can be as fallible as anyone else in their thinking). I can sight any number of former executives in the US alone who've been unexpectedly shown the exit door with a golden parachute because they made some very ill-considered choices which ultimately damaged the brand and the company. If, in the coming year, we see a shake-up in NCsoft's leadership, then we'll both know what happened (and why it needed to happen).

It's not that CoH was losing money, it's that it wasn't making *AS MUCH or MORE money* as some of the other aged IPs in NCsoft's portfolio. Again, the Earnings Report calls Aion's sales "weak" for xyz reason and that game was outperforming City of Heroes by quite a wide margin.

I'm sure NCsoft was losing money due to a culmination of operating mistakes across its entire portfolio. Rather than take the time to investigate and tighten up each IP's operating costs however, it looks like they took the easy way out. I'm not saying or condoning their response as a smart business decision but I will say they definitely took the quick and easy way out by dropping City of Heroes off the balance sheet.

Again, not the choice I would have made - especially in light of GW's strong "1 million preordered units" sales which would've easily buoyed NCsoft (and CoH) through hard times. They also could have (and should have) kept CoH on board and made strategic improvements across *all* their IPs. City of Heroes is still very much profitable and it could have been even more profitable had they taken a different approach. Alas, they didn't (much to our community's mutual chagrin) and now the end is nigh.

Me personally, I say blame NCsoft's corporate leadership for their short-sighted and panicky behavior. Ultimately, they're the ones that really need to go.

Heh, you've never been through the corporate acquisitions/liquidation process or participated in board meetings where the top brass discuss options to improve the company's bottom line have you? If you have, then let me come work for your company because all the ones I've worked with in the past have all gone down the same road NCsoft has taken for a variety of reasons but always working towards the same result.

"This company needs to make money and remain profitable."

If that means lightening the load in the proverbial boat just to keep the company's bottom line from sinking any further, then so be it.

Who knows? Unless the Devs tell us what it was (which they may do a year or two down the road once any potential NDA that may have been tied to their severance packages has expired) we may never ever know.

I agree.

I think GW2 sales would've lifted them back into the black and given them and Paragon Studios time to re-assess their needs and develop a stronger business plan. In their defense, it would've been corporate suicide to risk waiting another quarter and finding even worse negative numbers than before. Me personally, I don't think they had to go down this road but its the one NCsoft chose to take and it *will* affect their reputation in the industry and long-term bottom line for years to come.

$100 you didn't have before? Sure, but what does that mean when you're $100,000 in debt...? Sadly, not a whole lot (unless you declare bankruptcy and start over).

Again, they were faced with a Sophie's Choice moment: which of your MMO children are you going to give up just so the rest (along with your parent company) can survive? Looking at the numbers it doesn't make sense to give up the better performing titles. CoH was tied with GW1 as the rock-bottom performer and the success of GW2 has pretty much guaranteed the survival rate of GW1 (for now anyway).

Meanwhile NCsoft is operating in the red; that's a frightening prospect for investors so they had to do *something* to get their bottom line back in the black or risk losing investors, a company buyout and/or going out of business permanently if the negative profit margins continued. I wish they'd waited one more quarter before acting this hastily as GW2 sales would've saved the day but they didn't - mostly likely because they couldn't afford to...

I don't envy the decision they had to make - nor do I like it - but it is what it is.