Sad to see this one go.  For some reason it seemed less intense and easier to play than WoW for myself and my friends.  No rage, just sad.

This news hit me a lot harder than I ever would have expected it to.

It's not a "Losing a video game" feeling, it's more a "This really cool place where I used to hang out and had some great fun with great people during bad times just burned down" feeling.

Quote from: Silverlion;578968The thing that kills me the most is all the time I spent and money on a digital game that doesn't even leave me a souvenir, only friends I made, and memories. (Unlike tabletop RPG's, where I have the book, and I have the character even if they "died.")

Very good point.

None of these are really "Souvenirs" (They remind me of the game, not of what my friends and I *did* in the game), but just for old time's sake I opened the closet to inventory all the CoH paraphernalia that I collected during the five years that I was into the game hardcore:

1)The two paperback novels. The Robert Weinberg one was fun (The CoX universe had Napoleonic superheroes?!!), the Robin D. Laws one seemed phoned in.

2)All the HeroClix figures, including both Statesmen.

3)The two three-ring binders. Yeah, kinda got suckered on that. But they're sturdy and look nice.

4)Two issues of the (Not very good) comic book.

5) The quick-play packet/preview for the aborted tabletop RPG. Ugg. Graceless mish-mash of the MMO with the Eden house system. Worked against each other. Probably for the best that it never came to pass, but I was really looking forward to it at the time.  

6)@Four or five hundred cards for the (Very well-done, underrated) CCG.

7)The Collector's Edition box of CoH, with the first HeroClix figure, a Scott Kurtz PVP mini-comic, and a small poster-map of Paragon. That map just might get framed...

The Collector's Edition big box of City of Villains, with a pretty little art book and other gew-gaws.

9) For the first two years that I played I didn't even have a debit card, so I have scads of those one-month plastic illustrated Game Time Cards that you could get at Gamestop. I even have three of the boxes they used to come in. Such a trivial piece of cheap ephemera...As silly as it sounds, I'm really glad I didn't throw these out.

Oh, man.  Remember back when there was even talk of a CoH TV series?

Why do I get the feeling that while City of Heroes probably made a profit, it didn't make enough of one?  I've seen that happen where corporations jettison decent products simply because it wasn't bringing in enough money to make it sexy in Wall Street's environment.

I am saddened by the loss of CoX. I never played hero-side, but I friend strongarmed me into buying a Villian side box. I enjoyed the included month of play. Even though I haven't played it in a long time, I have a warm spot in my heart for CoV and it's always occupied the absolute top on my list of games I'd like to give a second chance, time permitting.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;579582Why do I get the feeling that while City of Heroes probably made a profit, it didn't make enough of one?  I've seen that happen where corporations jettison decent products simply because it wasn't bringing in enough money to make it sexy in Wall Street's environment.

For instance, D&D 4th Edition.  

JG

I want to be in Atlas Park when the servers go down for the last time on November 30... kinda like Ultra-Man bravely facing down that white wall of nothingness in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I played CoH for several years. It was a lot of fun, but it was also aging fairly poorly. I thought they were busy making CoH2, but I guess not. In any case, I had a lot of fun playing that game.

I do hope the devs all quickly find new jobs. Corporations that just shut down an entire sub-company with no warning in order to make a quarter's profit look good are truly scum, IMO.

Quote from: danbuter;579983I do hope the devs all quickly find new jobs. Corporations that just shut down an entire sub-company with no warning in order to make a quarter's profit look good are truly scum, IMO.

Bear in mind that the video game industry is extremely volatile and the people who work in it know this.  It's pretty rare for a developer studio to exist for longer than the one game they were assembled to produce.  And I'd be willing to bet the writing was on the wall internally at NCSoft long before this.

I almost have to wonder if this decision and the GW2 overselling weren't related.  Sometimes it's not about "is this division profitable", it's "are the resources currently being sucked up by this division better used somewhere else".  I could easily see the COO at NCSoft realizing that they'd underprovisioned for the GW2 launch, but there's all those CoH servers sitting there not doing anything important...

Quote from: James Gillen;579610For instance, D&D 4th Edition.  

JG

I was thinking of 3.5 myself....

I've read rumblings on CoX in-game chat that the end may be coming sooner than Nov. 30.

Anyone know anything about that?

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;580686I've read rumblings on CoX in-game chat that the end may be coming sooner than Nov. 30.

Anyone know anything about that?

I dont think there has been any official announcement that Nov 30th was the last date either

It's a shame CoH is going, but it seems to me every MMORPG will go this way as they try to 'strike gold' and get WoW numbers then fall short and be declared a failure by someone doing the accounts.

Quote from: APN;581484It's a shame CoH is going, but it seems to me every MMORPG will go this way as they try to 'strike gold' and get WoW numbers then fall short and be declared a failure by someone doing the accounts.

Yeah, until one of them does blow past or equal to wow, like WOW did to Everquest.

I always have hopes we'd get more competition in design rather than repetition.

Quote from: APN;581484It's a shame CoH is going, but it seems to me every MMORPG will go this way as they try to 'strike gold' and get WoW numbers then fall short and be declared a failure by someone doing the accounts.

I've said it elsewhere: if you are not Blizzard, trying for #1 in the MMO market is a recipe for financial failure. You've got over a decade and billion dollars spent against you before you even start.

You aim for, say, #5. MUCH cheaper to develop and support, and there is still plenty of money to be made - Turbine, for example, are doing great with DDO and LOTRO, and Guild Wars has always been a solid earner. That's the model you should be looking towards.