Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by ShakyMo


Or they should cut long time coh players a deal on gw2 or b&s or whatever

Does NCsoft owe something to those players?

Not technically, but a world run on cold techanalities is a sad one indeed and that is aside from the fact that it isn't good business to create as much bad will to your overall brand as shutting this title down is causing.

Even if they don't feel obliged to pay back to the customers that have paid so much to them in terms of goodwill, it would be smart to keep this game running as long as it is 1p in profit froma PR standpoint.

It is far easier to make people hate you then love you in any industry.

Originally posted by Gruug

F2P, as it is called, is suppose to SAVE all MMO's. Why did it not work with CoH?

Because it's a big lie pushed by an industry that wants us to believe that the problem is with a revenue model rather then with their core product.

The same reason a sub game has to go F2P in the first place is probably the same reason it will stumble as one in the long term if it isn't addressed.

But the rub is, ofc, that the issue (whatever it is) could have as easily been addressed under the sub model. Fashionable thinking is like an unturnable juggernaut in this industry though.

Originally posted by Gruug

F2P, as it is called, is suppose to SAVE all MMO's. Why did it not work with CoH?

 F2P can, if done right...freemium however only delays the end...CoH was freemium, not F2P. The only game that can be said was "saved" by freemium was DDO...but that isnt really freemium because you can unlock everything just by playing, unlike, say, LoTRo where you can unlock a lot of the game, but not all of it and can only do so by paying.

F2P means the entire game is free but the game has a shop where you can by mostly vanity items and buffs via MICRO transactions. "corporate" game makers dont get that.

In a case like CoH, its a damn shame they didnt understand that because that is a game that SCREAMS for F2P with microtransactions with the amount of costume pieces the company could have made for their shop...instead, all they did was lock most of what the game had before going freemium in hopes enough people would be willing to pay money to get them and they created next to NOTHING for that shop after the fact outside of content.

The game deserves to go away.

Originally posted by rdrakken

 

The game deserves to go away.

No it does not, no game deserves to go away (except maybe SWTOR ), especially City Of Heroes, as it is just wrong, and if it does go away then it will make it easier for other companies to shut down their MMOs in the future. Not to forget that people will lose their jobs on this. With SWG, most (if not all) SOE people working on SWG are still working at SOE but are now on other SOE games.

People end up putting loads of time and money into these things, and when they shut down, it all goes away. MMOs do shut down, but they should not be this easy to shut down.

If Paragon Studios were not trying to save the game, I would not be pushing the issue, but from that it is evident, it should not be shutting down, and is blatantly wrong

F2P cannot save anything, it is a strategy adopted by a gaming company once it sees that the player hordes have moved on to the next big thing. F2P used to be the excuse to have a cash shop, you did not pay for the game so having a cash shop was supposed to be OK.

Now days of course they put the cash shop in subscription games from launch, cash shops make money, regardless of what players think that’s the only reason a gaming company needs to have to put one in a MMO.

The business model has switched to making as much money as possible at launch then ditching the MMO as soon as in its profits go down. So you want that cash shop in at launch, not later once most of the players have gone.

Originally posted by Gruug

F2P, as it is called, is suppose to SAVE all MMO's. Why did it not work with CoH?

 

 

Because CoH f2p model has a fatal flaw. It was basically giving the game for free to old vets(the ones who were more likely to pay for it) and making pretty hard to newcomers to feel competitive(i am not talking about pvp) as heroes. So the game ended up with regular crowd of subscribers since always, and returning vets getting everything but incarnates for free while playing other games.

My guessing is that if CoX was making money, it was not tha much and Paragon is trying to convince NCSoft that the game can do better in the future.

If UO can stay up, if LOTRO can stay alive, if DnDO can stay up, if godforsaken Champs online can keep going and that abortion of a game STO isn't shut down, then CoH should stay alive.  It's even better than Aion, which gets mergers instead of shutting down.

There are still thousands of actual premium subscribers, and thousands more that spend a little in the paragon market.  If there was just one server it would be busting at the seams.  It costs only a little to keep a server going in service mode, ncsoft just doesn't want it stinking up their new business model of pretending they are the gods of mmo.  Too bad for them aion is garbage and GW2 fun wears off quickly. 

Any of you who think you know something and are spouting off crap reasons why they can't keep it running really know nothing.  I'll bump this when certain news is confirmed, but the theories of what's going on with ncsoft in general have been posted a couple times now.  I won't regurgitate them. 

If you don't like the game, move on.  It's tasteless to troll the topics of an mmo being shut down that has thousands of fans that have dedicated so much of their time and money to it.

Originally posted by Omnifish

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by Omnifish

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

I'm still wondering why they shut it down.  After some thought I can only come to 2 conclusions.

1.  The game was not able to pay it's bills.  To me this seems unlikely.  It seemed (IMO anyway) to be very stable up to the f2p piont with ~150k subsribers and seemed to be that way for many years.  I didn't play the f2p one, but I can't see it doing so badly that it lost all those or a majority of those players.

2.  They decided to use the resources that this game took and deploy them in another area that they believe will make more of a profit.  To me this seems the more likely because again, I don't think it was doing badly.

Unfortunately either way, you'd have some convincing to do to explain to them that it is worth the resources to keep this game going vs deploying them somewhere else.

It does help that Paragon Studios are aiding in  the efforts to keep the game going. They know more about the state of the game than the players do. That should also speak volumes to EVERYONE that the game should really not be shutting down, and not only puts people off NC Soft, but also other MMOs by other companies. If companies see that NC Soft got away with shutting down CoH, then other comapnies will do the same with their MMOs, and all MMOs will be at risk of shutting down, even if doing well. MMOs will only really be safe for about a year, then after that and you have not played it, no point getting stuck into them then, as may get shut down before you have gotten the most out of it.

One of the options they are seeking is selling the game, and if that happens, then Pargaon Studios may still be out of work, unless the new company wants to take on Pargaon Studios.

The game may have been out of about 8 years, but has only been F2P for a year, which no doubt attracted more new people.

 

 

 

This really shouldn't be difficult to understand but NCSOFT are shuting COH down because either it wasn't turning a profit or they couldn't find a way with how the game is for it to be profitable again.  That's about it.

They don't owe anything to you or me or the industry to keep something going which isn't profitable to their company.

The F2P model was a disaster, the game was too old and haggard to attract new players long term and old players were put off from trying it by how much they had to fork out to play a game they'd left behind.  F2P is a cash grab for most former P2P games, COH simply didn't have enough to hook people to pay up long term. 

Honestly I wish people would just let this one go, I enjoyed the game for about two years but most people up in arms about this aren't current players, just those wearing rose tinted specs. Time to move on.

It only gets difficult when people like you keep spewing BS, because you are completely clueless

The game should not be shutting down, and the proof is that Paragon Studios themselves are helping in saving CoH

They know better than you or I whether it is profitable or not, and if it was a lost cause in being saved, they would not go out of their way to save it, and just concentrate on the closure. They have not even officially announced the close date yet, let alone started work on end game events.

Just because you do not like it, does not mean there is need to trash it for everyone else, and if this goes ahead then maybe your favourite game will shut down too, despite being popular, and seemingly turning a profit.

GW2 has no subscription package what so ever, and relies soley on people buying from the stor, but people who do play it have said they can play it easily without buying anything. City of Heroes need tio buy stuff to make it playable.

GW2 with 2 million players paying $0 is less profitable than Coh with 15K people spending at least $5 in the store or subbing.

[mod edit]

I'll move on when Paragon Studios moves on. You do not know how many subs/cs purchases COH needs to be a profitable venture either, but I trust Pargaon Studios do, and they are doing everything to help save COH, which they would not do, if it was a lost cause.

They are looking for work, as preparing for the worst. If they rely on the hope that COH will be saved, then they will be totally out of work. If COH is saved they will not need new work

Also I think this thread is for you, Mr Omni'Negativity'Fish

Originally posted by Gruug

F2P, as it is called, is suppose to SAVE all MMO's. Why did it not work with CoH?

 

 

They got their business model wrong. They should have let go of the idea of subscriptions and gone with a true f2p model. The model they went with overemphasized subscribing while putting too many restrictions on free players, causing them to quit instead of subscribe.

Originally posted by OSF8759

Originally posted by Gruug

F2P, as it is called, is suppose to SAVE all MMO's. Why did it not work with CoH?

They got their business model wrong. They should have let go of the idea of subscriptions and gone with a true f2p model. The model they went with overemphasized subscribing while putting too many restrictions on free players, causing them to quit instead of subscribe.

Subscription models worked in the past, and guess what? They still do. I don't constantly flit from game to game hunting the next "big thing". I have no problem paying a flat monthly fee (less than a movie and soda) to have the whole game open to me. Nor do I begrudge the operators their cash shop, helping the game's profitability while feeding the players' desire for new looks and options.