CoH to be shut down

[luckton]

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php

This morning we announced that Paragon Studios will be taking to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time.

In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations to sunset the world's first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of the year. As part of this, all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Market purchasing will be discontinued effective immediately. We will have more information regarding a detailed timeline for the cessation of services and what you can expect in game in the coming weeks.

The team here at Paragon deserves special praise for all that we have accomplished over the last 5+ years. These developers are some of the most creative and talented people in the gaming industry. By now, we've all been given this news internally, but to anyone who may be reading this message after the fact; know that your hard work and dedication has not gone unappreciated or unnoticed. To any potential studios looking to grow your team; hire these people. You won't regret it.

To our Community,

Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You've been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn't have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don't dwell on the "how" or the "why", but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team.

Thank you, and I'll see you in the skies, one last time.

Andy Belford

Community Manager

Paragon Studios.

I'm rather speechless...I thought this still had a good following.

[CmdrSlack]

So yep, Paragon is being closed by NCSoft and CoX is going to be shut down.

It's pretty sad, IMO. CoX was a game that had loads of potential and just didn't stick. Still the best super hero MMO by far.

[Trippy]

Wow, that's sad. I'll need to fire it back up and make some videos of my characters so I'll have something to remember the game by.

[Ingmar]

Wow, that's surprising. Pop numbers still seemed pretty good last time I checked in. I guess those people weren't spending much money on F2P stuff.

It's kind of shameful that Paragon goes down before Cryptic. CoX is easily in my top 5 MMOs ever, and blows away anything Cryptic ever did post-split.

[proudft]

 

[Zetor]

I'm surprised too. I thought this game was doing at least OK after the F2P transition?

COH is one of the most innovative games on the market that managed to get so many things Just Right. It's also one of those games that allowed me to relive my MUD zone-building days with the help of the Mission Architect content creation system. Man, that was so freakin' awesome... sigh.


Well... that's that, I guess.   *pours out a 40*

[Lantyssa]

This was always one of my favorites.  I'm sad.

[Merusk]

NC Soft is one of those companies that shuts things down on a fairly regular basis, aren't they?  They shut-down Lineage 1 last year after 10 years.  I expect GW1 will be shuttered in the next year as well.

Found the list of closed games on their wiki page.
Auto Assault            NetDevil            MMO              Closed August 31, 2007.
Dungeon Runners    NCsoft            MMO                    Closed January 1, 2010.
Dragonica                   Gravity Corp.    Casual MMO    Closed July 13, 2011.
Exteel                    NCsoft            TPS                    Closed September 1, 2010.
Point Blank (Korean)    Zepetto            FPS                    Closed July 13, 2011.
Tabula Rasa            Destination    MMO                    Closed February 28, 2009.

[Tyrnan]

I'm actually kinda surprised at how upset I am over this, given that I've hardly played the game for the last couple of years, just popping on now and again to check out new powersets. But it was my first MMO so I guess that gives it a bit more impact. Was there some article lately about NC's latest financials not being all that great? I'm assuming it has something to do with it.

[Numtini]

That's just horrible. It's a great game and an incredible dev team.

I personally think they botched the conversion by going with what was too much of a "free to pay" model, but I can't believe it's not profitable to keep it alive.

[ezrast]

Noooooooo!

So many good memories, and a game I always felt like I could put more time into even after all catassing I did for purples.

Now I'll never get around to getting 1000 badges.

[proudft]

Maybe someone will buy it?  Maybe?   

[kildorn]

That's unexpected. Was the micro-transaction model such that you never actually needed to pay them for anything?

[Ingmar]

Definitely not, if anything it was more the opposite, you could hardly do anything without paying.

[Nebu]

This is the game that renewed my hope for the MMO genre.  It wasn't trying to be anything but fun.  Character creation was fun, travel was fun, and pummeling piles of bad guys was fun.  

I feel like I lost an old friend.  

[luckton]

They were making great progress in adding more and more variety, more powers, more stuff to do at the end game, and lots of quality of life stuffs.  I blame Cryptic for being a bunch of dicks from the get-go in trying to make Everquest-in-tights, and trying to hide too much of the game mechanics under the rug and leaving players wanting to play more effectively in the dark.

Like most have said, we moved on to newer things.  But this game was kinda of a breakout from the standard MMO mold we were accustomed to at the time, and it will be missed.

[proudft]

That's unexpected. Was the micro-transaction model such that you never actually needed to pay them for anything?

If you didn't pay you got (I believe), 2 character slots, no access to inventions, and then a bunch of random stuff like the architect/mastermind & controller classes/various powersets may or may not have been disabled depending on how long you had been a subscriber and if you had bought Going Rogue.

I found it basically similar to LOTRO - you could muddle through if you really really liked the game and were poor, but it was much more convenient to pay.

[Ingmar]

I blame Cryptic for being a bunch of dicks from the get-go in trying to make Everquest-in-tights, and trying to hide too much of the game mechanics under the rug and leaving players wanting to play more effectively in the dark.

Regarding the first bit, what the fuck? Nothing was ever Everquest-y about this game, at all. Regarding the second, that explains people leaving maybe for the first couple months when it first released. The situation now, not so much. The numbers have all been available for years upon years.

[Shannow]

So they're the barstards who shutdown Exsteel. I liked that game.

[Sjofn]

Man, this is depressing. CoX was one of my favorite MMOs. 

[Nevermore]

Holy shit, this is terrible!    Easily one of my favorite MMOs ever.  So different and innovative for its time, and so much fun.  The one fatal flaw of the game is the game engine was just too narrowly focused for nothing but combat.  A sad, sad day.   

[koro]

Echoing many others, I'm pretty torn up over this, and shocked by how sudden it was. Even though I haven't touched it in years and thought the F2P implementation was pretty bad, CoH was probably my favorite MMO. The only game I've played for longer was WoW.

Also, statement by NCSoft:

Both NCsoft and Paragon Studios are incredibly proud of the success of City of Heroes, but unfortunately, the continued support of the franchise no longer fits within our long term goals for the company. All employees at Paragon Studios are affected by this decision, including the management team.

I am reading this as "We're getting out of the Western games market, for real this time." I expect WildStar to be on the thinnest of ice.

[Scold]

Surprised they didn't find some other company to sell it to. Even running in maintenance mode, there has to be a lot more that can be wrung out of it.

Oh well. I only tried CoH and CO last year for the first time, but CO's combat felt a lot more fun.

[koro]

From what I've been reading elsewhere, apparently CoH was still actually pulling in a profit, while other games like Aion were losing upwards of $6 million a quarter.

So I guess the solution is to shut down the venerable profit-turner that costs next to nothing to maintain?

[Trippy]

Paragon Studios was also working on a new game so the net (CoX revenue - new game production costs) may have been costing NCsoft money.

[Hutch]

Oh, sad day. I loved that game. Outside of WoW and AC1, that's probably the MMO that I spent the most time actually playing.

[Modern Angel]

I am reading this as "We're getting out of the Western games market, for real this time." I expect WildStar to be on the thinnest of ice.

Since GW2 just launched, I sort of doubt it.

Sad about the news. It never really did it for me, but I admired the attempt and the style. Character creator was still awesome.

[Ingmar]

I think for me the biggest thing is that it was the first game I played that rewarded and encouraged group play during leveling content, without requiring it. That was huge. Almost everyone fails at this.

[Goreschach]

Early COH was probably the most pure, distilled fun I've had in an mmo.

[Fordel]

That's unexpected. Was the micro-transaction model such that you never actually needed to pay them for anything?

If you didn't pay you got (I believe), 2 character slots, no access to inventions, and then a bunch of random stuff like the architect/mastermind & controller classes/various powersets may or may not have been disabled depending on how long you had been a subscriber and if you had bought Going Rogue.

I found it basically similar to LOTRO - you could muddle through if you really really liked the game and were poor, but it was much more convenient to pay.

Yea, I didn't have going rogue, so I would have to fork up some cash to play my mastermind again.




CoH was grindy as FUCK, I have no idea if this is still true... but it was the only MMO that I never even got close to level cap.

[Koyasha]

Wow, that's sad.  I tended to get bored of CoH pretty quick each time I picked it up, but I did tend to go back every once in a while.  And of all the MMORPG's I've played, it's the only one that kinda lived up to the RPG part, cause I've never seen such a sizable population of actual roleplayers anywhere else.  I hope the game gets saved somehow, especially if it's being profitable.  Lot of characters and character ideas of mine were played in and came from that game.  Going to miss being able to go back to them.

[Mattemeo]

I shed a couple of tears at this news and I'm not afraid to admit it. No other MMO has kept me engaged and playing for as long as CoX did, and it was only through enourmous burnout and fatigue that I ever did stop. I have masses of characters spread over three servers that I almost universally love and I doubt there will ever be another MMO community as solid and supportive as CoX garnered. I have nothing but the best feelings when I think back on my time playing it; I acknowledge it had its fair share of bugs, flaws and design snafus, but they didn't matter. A wonderful, colourful, kinetic game and thanks to the Virtue server, some of the best random moments of MMO fun and actual roleplaying I've ever experienced. I actually feel a little damaged, now. Like something genuinely important is being taken away from me. I thought it was still in profit...? Wtf, NCSoft. Wtf.

[Numtini]

I am just really BS because of what I have heard of Paragon's development. I was a big fan of the COHpodcast and at one point before CO split off, they were down to really running a game and doing just fantastic stuff with I think it was 8 people. "Oh you like the revamp of that zone, that was this person and they did it all."

They deserve better. Honestly, this makes me sad I bought GW2. I just don't want to give NC any more money.

[Venkman]

Early COH was probably the most pure, distilled fun I've had in an mmo.

Me too. But the actual play of the game was so very fun. It also was ahead of it's time for things like teleporting players right to you, super-fast travel, liberal instantiation to reduce public-space social problems, quest hubs with clear direction to the next one, map markers, and a system that balanced the player against 3-5+ NPCs rather than the more traditional 1v1 methods of the day (which made you feel heroic).

Their early lead dev did have a be-like-EQ mentality with the XP curves and data obfuscation. I remember hitting the brick wall of advancement pretty quickly on all characters. This made the game super awesome for me from 1-14. After that it slowed to a crawl. I'm not really about "time to next level" as much as "time to the next ability or different kinds of fights".

For its day, they were quite innovative. And some of their better ideas are only now becoming commonplace. I am glad to see they've lasted for so long.

[Stormwaltz]

Rather than regurgitate, I'll cut & paste (& polish) what I said on Facebook:

I've never been a superhero fan. Even as a six year-old, I found the idea of men in tights punching each other to solve the world's problems silly and unbelievable. So City of Heroes was a game I didn't care about... until I tried it, at GDC 2004. Playing the tutorial once was enough to persuade me to preorder it, and I subbed for a total of five years.

CoH did many things right. It was my first skill cooldown based combat system in a genre that until that point ran combat in MUD-like, latency-friendly rounds. It made travel fun. It had a character customization system that even today stands out for its power and flexibility. It was the first game I played that granted achievement-based titles for combat, exploration, and other activities. It invented the brilliant sidekick/exemplar system. It invented the even more brilliant (but oddly less-appreciated)
giant monster combat code. In a time when statted character equipment and crafting systems were considered de rigeur, it tossed both out... and was good enough that no one really cared.

We've lost other games in recent years. I've lamented some of them. Aside from SWG, this is the first one that I truly think will lessen the industry when it passes.

Paragon and Cryptic Studios, you did fine work on this game. I salute every one of you. I'll miss your work.