FA+
Shop
A Big Pile of Sad
13 years ago
General
Today I had my last day at my current job, said bye to workers, and a lot of things dealing with moving. However this journal will be over another lousy piece of news I received today..... City of Heroes will be shutting down by Nov 30th.
This is one of those things which hit all of Paragon Studios by surprise, along with the entire playerbase. Even moreso as the game had been doing fairly well and was one of NCSoft's only profitable and definitely longest ventures. However, the company as a whole lost $6MM in Q2, and everyone is thinking they're trying to lessen the current shortage with cutbacks.... even to good games.
This news hurt me really badly today. CoH was my very first MMO, and I've stuck with it all eight years it has been around. I've seen the various iterations and changes they've made of the years, content patches, and had well over 30 characters I dearly love. Several times I had royally shitty days, and a good place to escape was there. The playerbase was fun, quirky, and known for an odd sense of humor and being helpful. I did try out several other MMOs over the years including WoW, AoC, Aion, Tera, Rift, Tabula Rasa, and a couple others. Every time though I would eventually find faults and end right back up with my home on City of Heroes. It was really like a home too. You could go for a few months away, and come right back into welcome arms and find most of your friends were still playing.
The developers after States left decided to begin doing innovative and new approaches to MMO design. They realized maybe the players weren't a bunch of idiots and an open dialogue was established. Bugs were found much faster, concerns were addressed in patches instead of the WoW "We know best and tested it ourselves so STFU it's fine, but will retract everything at the end of the expansion as you're right" approach. It was a constant tweak in progress, but you never felt like you were talking on deaf ears. Also, they found several good compromises to difficult situations.
The game was rocky at the start, but had all sorts of great and unique features they experimented with. As far as I know, they were the first game to add the now staple of Achievements. They had an insanely great character creator. They allowed players to create their own content for others in game. You could switch factions. Things were in place for group bases you could personally customize. Decent incentives were given for running old end game content. You could -EARN- things through hard work, even if the random number generator was being an ass to you. You set your own difficulty level in case you wanted more challenge. Level pacts had been added so close friends would never be outlevelled. Also you could play with your friends by sidekicking them so they could run higher level content with temporarily boosted levels. Plus RAGDOLL PHYSICS.
I could go on all day about the innovation, but the game had heart. Here are some things I'll never forget:
*Holidays in the Pocket Dimension Dance Club had the DJ hero create a little ski lodge with ramps and gifts.
*Feeling bad for the NPCs, so even in low level zones, my 50s would stop to help them out if they were in real trouble.
*It was common courtesy to help lowbies in trouble. You'd toss heals, buffs, or even a chunk of game money to make sure they could have a smoother ride.
*A player going by "Coyote" was helpful and assisted people in beta. He passed away before the game launched though. They added his character as a trainer in the tutorial as a memorial to him. No Make A Wish foundation required.... They cared for their players.
*Being a "badge whore" and spending some time doing little tasks for in-game achievments.
*Seeing line ups for costume contests where people loved each other's work enough to give prizes and have fun.
*Being able to go around as a 50s housewife with a shotgun, and be loved for it.
*Holiday events were meaningful and added to yearly.
*Finding a building on fire, nobody around, and strapping on an extinguisher and helping save the day.
*Finding the secret developer lounges. Never forget "Moon River" sung in the bathroom.
*FREEM!
And hundreds of little quirks more.
To all my friends there over the years, Cal, Gno, Inf, Icy, Reebo, Red, PP, LL, 7, Ant, Ankle, Sylv, Zooty, and others, thank you for being the most awesome people in an MMO.
To say I'm sad and feeling like I'm losing a good friend is an understatement. For those of us who stuck with CoH, we know we're losing a little community who all will ride it into the sunset, knowing we fought to be good people, even to digital npcs at the end of the day. I'll miss you, and there will never be anything like you again. At least the devs finished the main initial story and plot for the game. I helped to save the world from a parallel dimension, help recover the world from the loss of it's greatest hero, and fight back an evil creature lurking behind the shadows all game. I hope the best of luck, and hugs to any of you who also have very fond memories of this great game.
This is one of those things which hit all of Paragon Studios by surprise, along with the entire playerbase. Even moreso as the game had been doing fairly well and was one of NCSoft's only profitable and definitely longest ventures. However, the company as a whole lost $6MM in Q2, and everyone is thinking they're trying to lessen the current shortage with cutbacks.... even to good games.
This news hurt me really badly today. CoH was my very first MMO, and I've stuck with it all eight years it has been around. I've seen the various iterations and changes they've made of the years, content patches, and had well over 30 characters I dearly love. Several times I had royally shitty days, and a good place to escape was there. The playerbase was fun, quirky, and known for an odd sense of humor and being helpful. I did try out several other MMOs over the years including WoW, AoC, Aion, Tera, Rift, Tabula Rasa, and a couple others. Every time though I would eventually find faults and end right back up with my home on City of Heroes. It was really like a home too. You could go for a few months away, and come right back into welcome arms and find most of your friends were still playing.
The developers after States left decided to begin doing innovative and new approaches to MMO design. They realized maybe the players weren't a bunch of idiots and an open dialogue was established. Bugs were found much faster, concerns were addressed in patches instead of the WoW "We know best and tested it ourselves so STFU it's fine, but will retract everything at the end of the expansion as you're right" approach. It was a constant tweak in progress, but you never felt like you were talking on deaf ears. Also, they found several good compromises to difficult situations.
The game was rocky at the start, but had all sorts of great and unique features they experimented with. As far as I know, they were the first game to add the now staple of Achievements. They had an insanely great character creator. They allowed players to create their own content for others in game. You could switch factions. Things were in place for group bases you could personally customize. Decent incentives were given for running old end game content. You could -EARN- things through hard work, even if the random number generator was being an ass to you. You set your own difficulty level in case you wanted more challenge. Level pacts had been added so close friends would never be outlevelled. Also you could play with your friends by sidekicking them so they could run higher level content with temporarily boosted levels. Plus RAGDOLL PHYSICS.
I could go on all day about the innovation, but the game had heart. Here are some things I'll never forget:
*Holidays in the Pocket Dimension Dance Club had the DJ hero create a little ski lodge with ramps and gifts.
*Feeling bad for the NPCs, so even in low level zones, my 50s would stop to help them out if they were in real trouble.
*It was common courtesy to help lowbies in trouble. You'd toss heals, buffs, or even a chunk of game money to make sure they could have a smoother ride.
*A player going by "Coyote" was helpful and assisted people in beta. He passed away before the game launched though. They added his character as a trainer in the tutorial as a memorial to him. No Make A Wish foundation required.... They cared for their players.
*Being a "badge whore" and spending some time doing little tasks for in-game achievments.
*Seeing line ups for costume contests where people loved each other's work enough to give prizes and have fun.
*Being able to go around as a 50s housewife with a shotgun, and be loved for it.
*Holiday events were meaningful and added to yearly.
*Finding a building on fire, nobody around, and strapping on an extinguisher and helping save the day.
*Finding the secret developer lounges. Never forget "Moon River" sung in the bathroom.
*FREEM!
And hundreds of little quirks more.
To all my friends there over the years, Cal, Gno, Inf, Icy, Reebo, Red, PP, LL, 7, Ant, Ankle, Sylv, Zooty, and others, thank you for being the most awesome people in an MMO.
To say I'm sad and feeling like I'm losing a good friend is an understatement. For those of us who stuck with CoH, we know we're losing a little community who all will ride it into the sunset, knowing we fought to be good people, even to digital npcs at the end of the day. I'll miss you, and there will never be anything like you again. At least the devs finished the main initial story and plot for the game. I helped to save the world from a parallel dimension, help recover the world from the loss of it's greatest hero, and fight back an evil creature lurking behind the shadows all game. I hope the best of luck, and hugs to any of you who also have very fond memories of this great game.
If your looking for another MMO, look up Antilia, it's still in early alpha I think but it's a furry MMO with a lot to it so far and much more to come.
I hope you feel better soon man. *snugs*
What bugs me is they didn't even TRY to sell it. Just shitcanning it, like if they can't profit from it no one can.