http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Paragon-Studios-City-of-Heroes-MMORPG-Andy-Belford-NCsoft,17315.html
http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php
QuoteThis 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.
In many ways this is sad to me, I played quite a bit of this game collectively and it's sad to see it go.
Lots of good Super Memories, that's for sure, maybe we should all log in one last time just for a group pic or something.
I'd love to find another MMO that is as satisfying as CoH/CoV was.
I'm down for that... anyone else? One last harrah in Paragon City?
Darren, aren't you still playing this game? You'll have to find something else...
Maybe Firefall? I know it finally launched but I haven't checked it out yet.
Or what was that other game where you solve mysteries? That sounded cool
It's all my fault.
I jumped back in to Free2Play a few months ago, and now it's been about 2 weeks since I've logged in, so now they KNOW there's no reason to continue...
Oh well, good times. Was fun visited the new zones, though -- there's this imperial Rome type of place (http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Cimerora) (time travel ftw!) and a couple of "dark" metaphysical zones (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/First_Ward , http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Night_Ward ) , both of which made me actually "wake up" for a while to their novelty, didn't hurt that the baddies were actually VERY tough when you took on even a mob of 2 or 3, doing a few missions thee was a nice refreshing change from "regular" warehouse/cave mission grinding that eventually all blurred together.
But overall it just wasn't the same fun engaging experience without you guys to do Task Forces with.
So yeah, if any of you are interested during THIS WEEK o next week let me know in this thread -- my Brute (like a Scrapper, but with Fury buildup) is awesome for solo-ing and thus would do fine in some heavy story arcs or Task Forces even with a single other player who is a Tank or Defender/Healer, would be a "blast"...
That's a big regret for me here is not exploring the amazing new zones. I mean I tried some of that stuff when it first came out with Melbosa but at the time I was going through too much.
I'm looking for another social game at the moment, Minecraft has really got me excited about playing games with other people again, it's a positive experience, that's for sure.
I thought SWTOR could bring me that but I find it a very difficult game to play due to the user interface and lack of community, very few times have I just teamed up with someone for the heck of it, CoH made that SO super easy to do (I think because of the well defined roles in the hero/villain types).
Sigh now I want to play it more than ever. I have it loaded on my gaming machine too.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 05, 2012, 09:47:30 AM
Or what was that other game where you solve mysteries? That sounded cool
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_World
place to put photos and share stories:
http://cityofheroesveterans.com/
official CoH devs TY page
http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php
Gosh! I'm gonna have to go through the archives now and find any old screenshots I have!
So many fond memories, it seems like an age ago, I'm getting awfully nostalgic now.
It's too bad The Secret World isn't FTP...
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 05, 2012, 10:26:00 AM
That's a big regret for me here is not exploring the amazing new zones. I mean I tried some of that stuff when it first came out with Melbosa but at the time I was going through too much.
very few times have I just teamed up with someone for the heck of it, CoH made that SO super easy to do (I think because of the well defined roles in the hero/villain types).
Sigh now I want to play it more than ever. I have it loaded on my gaming machine too.
I have no problem being the higher-level part of a hero-sidekick duo, bro. We can go explore the zones I mentioned above, play a few missions, HECK I've got the portal to go to http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Ouroboros at any time so I can jump into ANY of the past missions/storyarcs that I missed out on, and some of them sound pretty interesting, story-wise. We can easily change the difficulty level to super-low in order to run through them quicker and experience more story in less time that way.
Offer (http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/vince-offer_shamwow.jpg)'s out there.
ps: for the future very-casual MMO'er: http://www.gameogre.com/freemmorpgs.htm
Cool beans, maybe we can hook up this weekend?
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 05, 2012, 10:42:31 AM
Cool beans, maybe we can hook up this weekend?
weeknights are better for me, I'm trying to let my kids pretty much monopolize my entire Saturday + Sunday while they're still young enough to want to hang with me ;)
Quote from: Darren Dirt on September 05, 2012, 11:49:00 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 05, 2012, 10:42:31 AM
Cool beans, maybe we can hook up this weekend?
weeknights are better for me, I'm trying to let my kids pretty much monopolize my entire Saturday + Sunday while they're still young enough to want to hang with me ;)
Dang, I reserve most nights for side projects and take the weekends to relax.
Then we are at an impasse!
(http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/wp-content/uploads/princess-bride.jpg)
:P
http://www.facebook.com/CityofHeroes
:sigh:
http://www.facebook.com/SaveOurCityOfHeroes
:silly:
http://savecoh.tumblr.com/
"Hard data is tough to find, but the latest estimates indicate two things:
1. NCsoft lost $6 million last quarter, primarily due to the under-performance of properties such as Lineage and Aion. Neither of which is on the chopping block.
2. City of Heroes brought in $10 million in profits over the past year.
"
wait, WHAT?
plus... crowdfunding maybe? http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4383041#post4383041
They killed off the NA servers for Lineage, not sure if it was a chicken/egg thing though (i.e. not enough North American users to justify it).
The real blow is going to come with GW2 because as I understand it some people have got 100% completion already (not level cap mind you, 100% done EVERY single story/side quest) AND the PVP isn't all that good (apparently nothing much was changed from the crippled beta).
I think NCSoft is in some trouble and I'm saddened even more that CoH had to take the fall for it.
My blood shot eyes took the fall as well... grinded out a few 'Defeat all... Find all the...' missions. Level 37 still. But only played cuz I wanna show ' vote with your feet' support for a game I've loved playing since the beginning that others are fighting to save.
Who knows, maybe a dev slept with an executive's wife and this is payback... There's the external reasons given, and then there'll be internal reasons that we're never privy to. But @%&#canning an entire development team, instead of switching them to a new project, that's kinda weird.
It would be cool if they could make the server software available, maybe set up our own instances. I have a friend who did that with WoW a few years back so his family could play without typical WoW BS
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 06, 2012, 05:51:41 AM
The real blow is going to come with GW2 because as I understand it some people have got 100% completion already (not level cap mind you, 100% done EVERY single story/side quest) AND the PVP isn't all that good (apparently nothing much was changed from the crippled beta).
I don't think GW2 is an NCSoft game this time around...
They should give everyone VIP Access for the last two months, cause you can't even pay for VIP Access right now :(
Quote from: Melbosa on September 06, 2012, 08:55:36 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 06, 2012, 05:51:41 AM
The real blow is going to come with GW2 because as I understand it some people have got 100% completion already (not level cap mind you, 100% done EVERY single story/side quest) AND the PVP isn't all that good (apparently nothing much was changed from the crippled beta).
I don't think GW2 is an NCSoft game this time around...
ArenaNet is a subsidiary of NCSoft.
Yeah I just noticed that... yet you can't even see GW2 on NCSoft's site... weird setup there.
Quote from: Melbosa on September 06, 2012, 08:57:58 AM
Yeah I just noticed that... yet you can't even see GW2 on NCSoft's site... weird setup there.
It's a mess that's for sure.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 06, 2012, 08:52:43 AM
It would be cool if they could make the server software available, maybe set up our own instances. I have a friend who did that with WoW a few years back so his family could play without typical WoW BS
WoW server software is available even though they're still running servers? That's surprising - you'd think they would want the subscription dollars while they're still running servers.
Quote from: Thorin on September 06, 2012, 09:14:18 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 06, 2012, 08:52:43 AM
It would be cool if they could make the server software available, maybe set up our own instances. I have a friend who did that with WoW a few years back so his family could play without typical WoW BS
WoW server software is available even though they're still running servers? That's surprising - you'd think they would want the subscription dollars while they're still running servers.
That wasn't because Blizzard wanted you to have WoW server code... kinda got leaked/reverse engineered.
Quote from: Melbosa on September 06, 2012, 09:16:12 AM
Quote from: Thorin on September 06, 2012, 09:14:18 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on September 06, 2012, 08:52:43 AM
It would be cool if they could make the server software available, maybe set up our own instances. I have a friend who did that with WoW a few years back so his family could play without typical WoW BS
WoW server software is available even though they're still running servers? That's surprising - you'd think they would want the subscription dollars while they're still running servers.
That wasn't because Blizzard wanted you to have WoW server code... kinda got leaked/reverse engineered.
Exactly, turns out the servers just negotiate what's happening between the clients, the clients run most of the world the player interacts with. This was discovered mostly by people who were interested in automation, turns out most of what's happening on the servers are player/mob locations and damage/death update data.