Status Update (January 1)

[TonyV]

So wow, first of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!  I know that last year when we were looking forward to 2012, this isn't where we wanted to end up, but still, there's something to be said about unexpected detours.  Anyway, apologies for (yet again) being late with any kind of status update, but I wanted to make sure you're all still paying attention, so here goes...

As you probably noticed, the shutdown of the game went ahead as scheduled on December 1.  Like most others here, I was extremely disappointed that something couldn't be worked out before the game was shut down to keep it running without interruption.  Just to be clear, though, I still regard this as a temporary situation.

Titan Network

At the Titan Network, we've been working on various and sundry things. After some community discussion, Codewalker did put together a utility called Icon that allows you to access the costume editor if you still have the game client installed. (You do still have the game client installed, right?) Also, we're still in the process of working on reverse engineering the server, and progress is coming along. As you can imagine, implementing a brand new server from scratch is something that will take a while, but hopefully we'll have something to show for our efforts before too terribly long.

There is still a lot of City of Heroes stuff going on. I've seen a few people talk about having meet-ups, which I highly encourage. I might try to coordinate having one here in Atlanta in the near future. I'm also seeing lots of videos and artwork being produced.  The social media outlets such as Save City of Heroes on Facebook and the #SaveCoH hash tag on Twitter (including our own feed) are still very active.

Oh, and just FYI, you can still get AP33 stuff!  We're not selling it ourselves, but the guy who is isn't doing so for profit.

Ah, and one more PSA:  Several people noticed that Nemerle's SEGS web site recently went down. There has been some speculation about why, including some rumors of him receiving a cease and desist (C&D) order. I contacted him and he told me that this is not the case; he is simply having some issues with the web host and hopes to have the site back up soon.

Last, but not least, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the success of the Extra Life and Real World Hero charity drives.  Real World Hero raised $5,004.12, and Extra Live raised $9538 for a cumulative total of $14,542.12. That means that between Extra life and Real World Hero, the City of Heroes community has raised a whopping more than $50,800 over the past four years...  MIND.  BLOWN.

Task Force Hail Mary

The SaveCoH task force of people led by Ammon, Victoria Victrix, Rae, and Quinch is still approaching companies to acquire the IP and code for the game and relaunch.  Here is a short and important update I received regarding that effort:

Still on Disney for the next two weeks, please keep those cards and letters coming.  We have not heard anything, but we didn't expect to; almost no decisions are ever made in the two weeks covering Christmas and New Year.  Disney is monolithic and glacial, and it is very hard to get their attention, so don't get discouraged.  We have settled on our next target, Google.  A very high level contact at Google Ventures has been contacted.  He did not immediately try to discourage us, and in fact said that when he returns from vacation along with the rest of the higher level staff (see what I mean about Christmas?) he will start shaking some trees, particularly at Google Play.  The extremely good news here is that the contact is at Google Ventures and thus knows a LOT of venture capitalists.  While Google Play may turn down the idea of picking up City of Heroes and running it in the cloud, he may find one of those venture capitalists and Google will work with THEM to pick it up and run it under a Google Venture.  So we will know more in the middle of January about what he has found out.

Sounds promising, so definitely stay tuned for more!

City of Heroes Successor ("Plan Z") Projects

In addition, the teams working on a successor to City of Heroes are making steady progress.  I have to admit, while I was always confident in their abilities, progress is actually going faster than I expected it to.  As most of you probably know, there are two major projects that I know of going on: The Phoenix Project and Heroes and Villains.  I've asked both teams to provide a short update for everyone, and both obliged:

The Phoenix Project

Although City of Heroes is now gone, those of us at Missing Worlds Media have not been idle, working busily towards our goal of building a new place to establish the community now left without a home. We have accomplished much in the past month, most notably our first release of our teaser trailer, and in the coming months we hope to have even more activity. Utilizing the power of Crytek's third-generation engine, we have every intention of rebuilding our community to much greater heights.

You can check in on their progress at the Missing Worlds Media web site, and be sure to check out the new promo video they released today.

Heroes and Villains

Since the official announcement of the Heroes and Villains project on November 30th, the development has progressed very well throughout December, with a lot of feature testing as well as early coding work. Our main focus has been on the costume creator, as that's fundamental to the project, and needs to be done right. The base female and male character models are currently being created and rigged for animation, while the costume creator interface artwork is also coming along very well. Some examples of the testing we've been doing include importing terrain and environment objects, underwater areas, low gravity areas, dynamic lighting, night and day cycles and music for different areas. 2013 is shaping up to be a very exciting and promising year for this Plan Z project!

You can keep up with their progress at the Heroes and Villains web site.

All in all, I think that we're going to have a very interesting and exciting 2013 with a bunch of cool stuff in the pipeline.

Paragon Studios

Now, a quick update on the former staff of Paragon Studios.  I have to thank Minotaur who, after my last post, gave a bunch of updates off the official forums.  I apologize if I've missed anyone or if any information below is incorrect; if so, let me know and I'll try to correct it.

Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann is working on Star Trek Online at Cryptic Studios.
Jeff "Arbiter Hawk" Hamilton is also working at Cryptic Online as a systems designer for STO and their upcoming Neverwinter.
Phil "Synapse" Zeleski is also working at Cryptic. I'm not 100% sure which game(s) he's working on.
Andy "Zillinger" Belford landed at Electronic Arts, where he's a Global Community Manager working on an upcoming project.
Hosun "Black Pebble" Lee is over at Epic Games as a Product Marketing Manager.
Nate "Second Measure" Birkholz is a Senior Producer at mobile game developer Z2Live.
Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney is now at Capcom.
Keetsie "Tunnel Rat" Braz da Cunha is a Senior Effects Artist at Toys for Bob, developer of Skylanders.
David "Noble Savage" Nakayama is a Senior 2D Concept Artists at KIXEYE, in addition to doing some freelance work.
Leo "Honey Badger" Braz de Cunha is also an Effects Artist, he's the "Brazilian at Gazillion."
Destin Bales is a Senior Producer at Riot Games working on League of Legends.
Neal Kettler is also at Riot, working as a Software Architect.
Rob Anderberg landed at Linden Lab as Senior Director of Development.
Andy Maurer is now an Online Engineer at Sledgehammer Games.
Jason Lee is a UI Engineer at Storm 8.
Fire Man ("Bass Ackwards") is now at Trion.  Curses!  Layoffs hit again!  Best wishes that he lands something else quickly.

In addition, you can follow Matt Miller on Twitter and/or Melissa Bianco on her Google+ page or her personal blog.  (As a side note, did you know that Melissa is a published author?  That was news to me!)  I haven't heard much about Brian Clayton, but just for the sake of completeness, here's a video of a guy named Brian Clayton who has a country music band.  Hopefully our Brian Clayton has great things in store, as this Brian Clayton sings, further down the line.  :)

So that's about it for the update, hope it was worth the read.  Again, I'm looking forward to the cool stuff in the pipeline and seeing progress on our various efforts.  Don't forget, most of this stuff is a genuine community effort, and as part of the community, we're counting on you to continue championing our cause, to keep the spirit of City of Heroes alive, and come up with new ideas and projects to help out.

[Golden Girl]

Just a quick correction - unfortunately, Fire Man is no longer at Trion - he was one of the layoffs when they downsized at the end of last year.

[blackjak]

Thank you for the dev listing. Glad so many have found places to land on their feet.

[Perfidus]

Thanks for the update.

[dwturducken]

Thank you, Tony. I know I had seen a few of the job updates, but not all of them. I'm glad that A) so many are finding work and B) someone is keeping a spreadsheet. :)

Been keeping half an eye on Twitter for the ones I have handles for, and Posi seems to have taken the family to Orlando for New Years. (That sounds stalkery...) Having made that trip as a kid, I can say first-hand that it would certainly be the kind of end to the year someone in his position needs, particularly to recharge the batteries in prep for hitting the ground running in the coming year.

Here's to the new year! :)

[NecrotechMaster]

it sounds like things are still progressing which is a sign of hope IMO

this is still one of those "hurry up and wait' things where we just got to keep going even though its glacially slow

[WildFire15]

Looks like Paragon staff were snatched up by some pretty high up studios. Kinda shows that NCsoft really didn't have a clue what they had

[beveri8469]

ncsoft should have appreaciated the PS since they were some awesome talented people.

[blackjak]

I was thinking this morning; it will be interesting to see what the talented people who worked on COX can do with a decent budget and advertising. Perhaps COH has heroically given it 's life to save the gaming world...

[DJMoose]

Thanks for the update, Tony!

[psicotic]

And now i just want thanks to Tony V for the update happy new year my friend! and i have some doubts or questions.

If CoH rise from the hand of a new publisher, then what happend with the other protects?(i mean all in the Plan Z). They stop? become a new ones? they merge together, or we going to have many clones of our beloved game?

Note. i dont troll and those who know me know i never doit, is just a bunch of things going on my head at the moment and dosent matters what become to the end all you guys have my best wishes on the success of every project!

sorry for the bad english i try to made my point or questions the best i can.

A great HUG for all you.
Yours
Psicotic.

[TonyV]

If CoH rise from the hand of a new publisher, then what happend with the other protects?(i mean all in the Plan Z). They stop? become a new ones? they merge together, or we going to have many clones of our beloved game?

At this point, both teams have been working on their respective projects for months.  I can't really speak for them, but I think they would go ahead and diligently try to follow through on their respective projects.

[Omega Mark V]

If anything, the fall of City of Heroes/Villains should give rise to many more Super Hero games and MMOs.

But we all want our City back. I know I do.

Thanks for the update, Tony. Best hopes to the Hail Mary team with Disney and Google.

[Tivomaniac]

Thanks for the update and keep up the great work everyone!

[downix]

And now i just want thanks to Tony V for the update happy new year my friend! and i have some doubts or questions.

If CoH rise from the hand of a new publisher, then what happend with the other protects?(i mean all in the Plan Z). They stop? become a new ones? they merge together, or we going to have many clones of our beloved game?

The ultimate Architect Entertainment setup ever!!!

[FourSpeed]

Happy New Year all!  :D

Thanks for the update Tony - some interesting tidbits in there.


Regards,
4

[Nafaustu]

I was thinking this morning; it will be interesting to see what the talented people who worked on COX can do with a decent budget and advertising. Perhaps COH has heroically given it 's life to save the gaming world...

I've been toying with that mentally as my assigned silver lining.   Good to see i'm not the only one who thought it.   :)

Happy New Years Everyone. :)

[srmalloy]

Looks like Paragon staff were snatched up by some pretty high up studios. Kinda shows that NCsoft really didn't have a clue what they had

In my experience, most upper management fails to recognize the distinction between a coder and a programmer; the former can produce code when presented with a detailed specification of what the code does and what its inputs and outputs are to be, while the latter is able to take "We want to have code that will do this" and figure out how to turn a general description into a fleshed-out and functional piece of code without having to have everything already spelled out for him, and is further able to take "wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?" and make it work.

[Minotaur]

In my experience, most upper management fails to recognize the distinction between a coder and a programmer; the former can produce code when presented with a detailed specification of what the code does and what its inputs and outputs are to be, while the latter is able to take "We want to have code that will do this" and figure out how to turn a general description into a fleshed-out and functional piece of code without having to have everything already spelled out for him, and is further able to take "wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?" and make it work.

This is on the money, I was very much a programmer and got bored and disenchanted when told to become a coder, so switched to another area of work.

[downix]

In my experience, most upper management fails to recognize the distinction between a coder and a programmer; the former can produce code when presented with a detailed specification of what the code does and what its inputs and outputs are to be, while the latter is able to take "We want to have code that will do this" and figure out how to turn a general description into a fleshed-out and functional piece of code without having to have everything already spelled out for him, and is further able to take "wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?" and make it work.

And what do you classify someone who can take overall descriptions and turn them into the specifications for coders?

(my coding skills are not the best, but I can break things down to let coders do their jobs)