14 replies to this topic

[ODonovan]

Saturday morning December 1st, at 3 o'clock US Eastern time (aka midnight US Pacific time), the servers for the groundbreaking superhero-themed MMO "City of Heroes" shut down permanently. The game had been open since early 2004 and had a hugely loyal playerbase. Strangely, the game was closed while still "in the black," making millions of dollars in profits per quarter. The game's owners, the Korean company NCSoft, refused offers to sell rights to the game even while lying to the public, saying they tried to sell the game but had no offers. A large player-run campaign to save the game has produced no results to this point, although a proposal from some of the game developers (Paragon Studios, formerly NCNorCal) and fans was recently delivered to the offices of the Walt Disney corporation and Disney Interactive Studios, their video game-related subsidiary. This proposal was meant to showcase the advantages of Disney purchasing the rights to the City of Heroes game. Player input was requested to be sent to Disney as well, to show player support and community involvement in the future of the game.

The closing of City of Heroes harkens back to when NCSoft also closed the futuristic-themed MMO "Tabula Rasa." That game's creator, Richard Garriott (aka Lord British), had just returned from a self-funded "space tourism" visit to the International Space Station and was in quarantine in eastern Asia when NCSoft forged a letter supposedly from Garriott, saying he was leaving the game and NCAustin, the NCSoft subsidiary from which he was directing the game's operation. This was presumably done to give NCSoft an excuse to close the game, which they quickly did. Garriott, however, claimed the letter was a forgery. He sued NCSoft and won a judgement in the amount of $28,000,000 US (twenty eight million dollars).


(Now to my personal rant.)

Since NCSoft has shown they are nothing but a pack of liars, I will NEVER AGAIN purchase or play any game with their name on it. This includes their newest release, Guild Wars II. They will not get another penny of my money nor will I ever stop warning everyone I can about their dishonesty and underhanded business practices.

This has to harken back in some ways to the closing of the "Multiplayer Battletech: 3025" game almost exactly 11 years ago, on December 6, 2001, and the feeling of loss and puzzlement it created. Whether or not you played, CoH, I hope you can see how the sudden, unnecessary closing of a game which had been "home" to hudreds of thousands of players has caused a LOT of hard feelings directed toward NCSoft.

On a personal note, two members of my "supergroup" (guild/clan) met online at one of our ingame functions. They immediately hit it off and they started playing their characters together. Ingame interaction led to phone calls and video chats, then a meeting in person. This was no small feat as she lived in Texas and he in Australia. He came to visit her. That was all it took. Sparks flew. Later, she visited him in Australia where they were married. The next few months were pure torture as she returned to the US and he began the process of coming to live with his new bride. His permanent residency was recenly approved (YAY!) and he arrived in Texas to set up housekeeping with his wife just a couple days before City of Heroes was due to shut down. They did get to spend the last night of the game side-by-side in real life while online with the rest of us in the SG.

So, here's a salute to the players of Pin-Up Girl and Proud Citizen, may your life together be long and happy!








I was wondering, how many CoH players do we have here in the MWO community? I found this image online. As a show of support for the community...the FAMILY that was and still is City of Heroes, I've added it to my .sig on any websites' forums on which I'm active. I would like to encourage other gamers to do the same...to display it whether or not you were ever a CoH player. Make your support known for the fair treatment of and honest dealing with players of online games by developers and publishers. Let's not allow City of Heroes to have died in vain.






Thanks for your time...

-Irish

(aka Liberty Eagle, Virtue Server, City of Heroes - Global ID: @Power Play - coh.com Forum ID: Power_Play)

[DerelictTomcat]

Everything dies and comes to an end... Small fact of life.

[Psykosis]

I miss MotorCity Online as well...

[wanderer]

Played CoH for a year or so myself.

It was a good game that didn't deserve to die, and yeah. I smell a rat with NCSoft's business practices.

[Starburster]

I will have to agree with your sentiment in regards to NCSoft. Its one I have seen mirrored by many people that were once a part of the CoH community.

Community...

One word that I foresee that will forever separate how I look at CoH compared to all MMOs I have been a part of and will be a part of. Hands down it was the best. Of course I have a vested view of this considering that for a long while I ran one of the largest and most supported global channels on Infinity, one that I created shortly after globals came to be. Their use of chat in that game is the standard that I feel all games should strive for but currently all fall drastically short of.

Your story about those 2 meeting in game and becoming a real life story is a nice one that transcends distances a bit more then most that I have heard of. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 couples that I knew in game that were single before they met one another in CoH . Furthest distance I heard of things almost working with people in there was someone on the east coast nearly travelling to Alaska .

Friday night was a bit of a surreal time for me. Was first time in about 4 months that I logged in. I was pleasantly surprised that when I did, there were already near a few hundred online in my old channel. Sitting in Pocket D and chatting with people, the night had the feel of when one of my favorite hangouts of my youth was closing and many people gathered there one last time to share some of their favorite memories and see old friends. I hope that being a bit older this time around for such an event, that I do a bit better keeping in touch then in the past .

I really hope that in time MWO comes close to how I felt about CoH, since CoH was the first and only MMO I would say I "loved". I would be lying to say its not going to be an uphill battle considering how I feel the community here tends to be too toxic for its own good and currently our chat options are not helping any. It is doable though and here is crossing my fingers that it does, would really hate to have another game I care about end sooner then it felt it needed to.

Good luck and happy hunting out there

@Novastar X,Y,Z of Infinity. Creator and longest running mod of Inf Badge Seeker

[JudgeDeathCZ]

Ye I feel NCsoft smell so much with this.I don't know if CoH was pay for month or just pay to play easier like MW:O...but you know ppl playing CoH will not pay in LA2 or GW2 or any other their game.
But you can hope for ressurect your great game(like happened with Hellgate:London) or try DC Universe online which is same genre .

[Mack1]

Played it from Beta and then another year after it released but left shortly after season 3 ruined all the fun.

[Fiachdubh]

Never played any of the games mentioned here and, after reading this, I will be damned sure never to give a single cent to NCsoft who clearly should not be aloud operate a business of any kind.

It was a nice image of pair who married playing the games final hours side by side.

[Stygian Steel]

yep i started coh shortly after issue 2 i think, whichever was the one that had the Rikti mothership that flew over atlas park, i stopped playing around 2 years ago due to personal and finacial issues, but indeed it had the best community i had ever seen online period let alone an mmo community. me my dad and my little sister played on 3 separate accounts, founded several SG's namely the S.uper H.uman I.ntensive T.eam or "the ****' as we were known on virtue, it was an amazing game, the shear content that it had was almost staggering if you actually went and looked for it or even just read the missions and contacts,i'm very sad to see its passing and hope to once again be part of such a stellar community




Stygia : lvl 50 dark melee/dark armor scrapper
Hydro- : lvl 50 ice blast/ice maniptulation blaster
Stinger-X lvl 45 archery/devices blaster
Nhudri the raven :lvl 50 warshade
and many more
my dads toons inlcuded
Darkest Hood lvl 50 assault rifle/fire manipulation
hooded arrow lvl 50 archery/energy manipulation
CryoStasis lvl 48 ice control/sonic controller
and a bunch of others with either "hood" or dark in the name lol

[Capp]

I played CoH when it first came out, but haven't played in years now, aside from some "free play" weekends back in the day.

A shame to see it go, I kinda miss it.


Edit: It was actually my first MMORG.

Edited by Capp, 02 December 2012 - 04:47 PM.

[Sealawyer]

i played that game when it was released for about 4 years. Then I switched to other games and played CoH on and off ever since. I loved that game. Ashamed it won't be saved.

It was my first mmo also.

Edited by Sealawyer, 02 December 2012 - 05:28 PM.

[Bagheera]

Ditto, also my first MMO, and the only one I ever played for any particular length of time. I had kept a sub to it non-concurrently for a little over 4 years. Funny, I happened to be changing jobs when it launched in '04, and timed my leave/start dates so I'd have a week "staycation" to check it out.

The character designer (the way you could look) was nothing short of revolutionary. I don't play many MMOs, and "gear" is one of the reasons. So much variety in Cities, I cannot stomach games where everyone's character ends up looking identical. Very strange that they are closing it down. I re-uped to play that wacky parallel universe expansion, and when I left it seemed they were speeding along towards a profitable F2P model and had tons of people still subscribed who had been there from the beginning.

Well, tons of fun was had, but all things do come to an end I suppose. Even if that end is untimely.

Edited by Bagheera, 02 December 2012 - 07:58 PM.

[DegeneratePervert]

NC Soft's sudden closure of Tabula Rasa are what has prevented me from buying Guild Wars 2.

[MEGABOT 5]

I don't play CoH, but I enjoy sitting around in my crotchless Batman outfit from time to time

[Icebound]

I miss Exteel.