CoH to be shut down

[Morat20]

Now I'm wishing I played more with Super Jump. :) I almost always took flying. I like raining death from above, and enjoyed being able to hover. (At least with blasters and equivilants).

Nothing says "I'm about to wreck your entire day" like a guy in spandex who doesn't deign to ever touch the ground.

[arcana]

What's happening in here ... 

I'm just sitting back in a lawnchair with a bag of popcorn.

[raydeen]

Superjump was great for hit 'n' run tactics. I used to love jumping into a bunch of baddies, troll them with some damage and then jump away. They'd start to give chase at which point I'd just superjump around in a large circle, get them to disperse a bit, jump back down take out a couple, jump away and laugh 'Tee hee hee, can't catch me!' Until one of the bastards would teleport me to him and another would mez me while a third would pound the shit out of me. Then it was brown spandex time. Fucking Tsoo.

[ezrast]

Arcana as in ville...?

[Xanthippe]

I will also chime in for whoever is listening and say thanks for Super Jump, and CoX in general. While I have probably played WoW more, and AO was my first, CoX will forever be special as the place I could be a hero (or in my fire tankers case, a god). Oh, and the combat spanked the pants off anything before or after in the MMO space, nothing may ever measure up to wading into a room packed to the rafters with mobs and watching your team of ten lay into them with dozens of awesome powers. Now I am really missing the game...

Yes, this. CoX had the most fun combat of any game I've played before or since, out of the gate. Travel powers still are the best. I haven't seen a better character creator.

Thanks to those who made it all possible.

[Minvaren]

TP was pretty exciting back in the day before you hovered briefly

"Oh hell I mis-clicked I'm up against a building TURN TURN TURN NO DON'T FALL PORT NOW ANYWHERE whew."

[koro]

I loved Teleport.

I loved the fact that CoH saved my custom ;binds server-side even more, so whenever I'd uninstall CoH and come back six months later, my good old shift+left click teleport bind still worked.

[Redgiant]

If you want to save your character state info in XML format, for future use in anything ranging from a simple character model viewer, zone browser, or the game if they keep it alive but don't have the character databases ...

Use this Titan Networks tool while logged in on any of your characters (same folks trying to save CoH; I've used it often)

[Morat20]

Sadly I can't get to my character. No City of Heroes client, and no way to download it.

[Sjofn]

Super Jump was the best. Unless it made much more thematic sense to pick something else, I ALWAYS picked Super Jump in CoH. Unfortunately, CoV's layout made fly a lot more sensible, but ... I still mostly took Super Jump, because come on.

Super Jump also led to those great panic moments of "Jump over this building and AHHH LANDING IN FREAKSHOW JUMP JUMP JUMP AHHH LANDING IN NEMESIS AHHH JUMP JUMP DEAD".

Ahahaha, I did that so many times. <3

Teleport was also good for moments of panic like that, but I only had that on one of my characters.

[Trippy]

Sadly I can't get to my character. No City of Heroes client, and no way to download it.

The game switched to using the NCsoft launcher a few years back. Download the launcher from here and from there you can download the game:

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html

[Morat20]

Great...that leaves merely the fact that I can't remember my password. And my secret question answer is wrong....:) When is the closing date?

[Trippy]

Don't think they've announced one yet.

[UnSub]

Great...that leaves merely the fact that I can't remember my password. And my secret question answer is wrong....:) When is the closing date?

November 30.

[Morat20]

Sadly I can't get to my character. No City of Heroes client, and no way to download it.

The game switched to using the NCsoft launcher a few years back. Download the launcher from here and from there you can download the game:

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html

Thanks. Now just waiting on support to help me reset my password. Amusingly, if I click on the link their email sends me to 'check the status of my ticket' I end up at the German City of Heroes website.

[Morat20]

You know, if this game is still profitable -- I'm curious why they're shutting it down. Or at least not spinning it off Station Pass style.

[UnSub]

It's not entirely clear how profitable Paragon Studios actually is, but their only product has seen a boxed expansion and then a F2P conversion over the last two years and revenue just keeps trending down.

NCsoft's alternative move would have been to fire a lot of people at Paragon Studios and put the game into maintenance mode. But they aren't SOE - they aim to have high performing titles rather than a wide range of just-profitable games. So it makes a kind of business sense to take whatever they spend on CoH/V - who isn't going to grow any more - and put it into GW2 and / or Wildstar instead.

[Morat20]

I suppose. I guess that's one reason I don't run a business. I can't help but look at any positive revenue stream and think "Anything is better than nothing" -- I'd either try to sell CoX to someone willing to run it in maintaince mode, or switch it over myself. I suppose it depends on the critical number of subs too.

I'd at least test the waters, but hey -- I don't run the place. :)

[Cheddar]

I suppose. I guess that's one reason I don't run a business. I can't help but look at any positive revenue stream and think "Anything is better than nothing" -- I'd either try to sell CoX to someone willing to run it in maintaince mode, or switch it over myself. I suppose it depends on the critical number of subs too.

I'd at least test the waters, but hey -- I don't run the place. :)

Once you get publically traded its a different ball game.  Especially with entertainment stock.

[Morat20]

Once you get publically traded its a different ball game.  Especially with entertainment stock.

No doubt. I really don't get the market these days. Too speculation driven, and I don't doubt it filters down into any publically traded company. Can't have merely "profitable" if there's a guy whose doing even better, even if you're making video games and he's making soft drinks.

[Trippy]

SOE is part of a publicly traded company.

[Lantyssa]

SOE doesn't have a stellar performer that allows them to shut down everything else.

[UnSub]

For a long time SOE relied on the Station Pass as an attraction for players, which sounded better with a lot of titles. And even then, The Matrix Online was shut down (with a reputed 0.5 developer working on it).

Now that everything is going F2P, they may not be so content to keep titles hanging around if they aren't profitable. Although if the game has been active long enough, there's a chance it has enough zombie accounts to keep it profitable, even if almost no-one actually plays it.

There was talk about an NCsoft Pass for a while, but it never happened.

[HaemishM]

What's happening in here ... 

P.S. Haemish, can you please change my name to andybelford or something like that.

I haven't had that power for years.

[Zetor]

If you want to save your character state info in XML format, for future use in anything ranging from a simple character model viewer, zone browser, or the game if they keep it alive but don't have the character databases ...

Use this Titan Networks tool while logged in on any of your characters (same folks trying to save CoH; I've used it often)

Adding to this: if you have made storyarcs for the Mission Architect, you can preserve them by exporting the file via the MA editor interface (save locally). You can also make a recording of the arcs by running through them using /demorecord. If you save a demo this way, you (or anyone else) can play it back by running the client from the command line -- presumably this will work even after the servers go dark. You can also use this to get a montage of your characters, SG base, etc.

Info about demo recording here

[Phred]

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.

That worked really hard at not letting you feel very super. Hence the lack of stickiness in my case.

[UnSub]

CoH/V's official AMA.

Some interesting stuff, depending on how far back you can remember / what you knew about CoH/V to begin with.

[Mattemeo]

Bloody hell, what a blast from the past. Well, some of it. A lot of the newer stuff just flew right over my head, but still - the sheer fucking balls of the CoX story team, wrangling all of that shit together into a Master Story Arc. Madness. Awesome, headache inducing madness.

Also, gold:

Was City of Heroes all a Nemesis plot? Heroes were penned into zones by war walls, and the city was populated by people who always walked around in circles, never entering buildings, repeating the same lines over and over again, like automatons. Also, there were no children or babies, which could be because Nemesis lacked the technology to create automatons that small. Was Paragon one big Nemesis simulation, meant to study heroes?

MM: Sure, why not. Explains away the limitations of the engine and the art team sufficiently.

[bhodi]

Good times, good times.



I played a lot of CoH with friends, and I'll be sad to see it go.

[Sjofn]

Were there actual plans for a moonbase?

MM: I approved art dailies from it on the last day of the studio. :( Issue 28.

RG: The funny thing is, our database had a value called MOONBASE that basically represented a build that didn’t exist in the system yet. It was a running gag that we would always be planning a moonbase, but it would never actually come to fruition. The plan for Issues 25-28 were the moment we hunkered down and said, “We’re actually going to do it this time!” We were... wrong.

 

[Kageru]

I don't have the foundation to understand most of that lore post... but now I actually wish I did :/

[UnSub]

For a long, long time CoH/V had indicated a moon-based zone was going to happen. There was a construction site in Steel Canyon (?) and one of the villain zones where there was talk of a launch station being built.

I also think there was some kind of survey that went out that mentioned a space / moon zone.

But then nothing happened.

[Sjofn]

My heartbreak was mostly at how sad they sounded about it. 

[Lantyssa]

I imagine they were excited to finally get it in the game.  I'd be sad, too.

[Kageru]

Summer Blockbuster – October 5 – October 8
Double XP – October 18 – October 22
Halloween Event – October 26 – October 29
Winter Event – November 9 – November 12
Rikti Invasion – November 23 – November 30

Live Server Shutdown – November 30 12:00 AM PDT

... apparently. No money or dev time for unique events I guess. It would be nice if they've made all the accounts premium so I can be there for the end, sad as it is.