Titan Network
Graveyard => Save Paragon Retirees => Save Paragon City! => Topic started by: TonyV on September 01, 2012, 12:19:57 AM
-
-
A few quick updates:
I've edited my post on the official forums with a link at the top to a cross-post to the Titan Network forums.
I'm looking at the Kickstarter web site. It's really important to me to have some kind of plan before jumping in. I absolutely, positively do not want to start taking donations until I can honestly look you in the eye and say, "This is what the money will be used for." In short, I need something more solid than, "It will have something to do with City of Heroes." It's really important to me to have a working plan.
Over this weekend, I'm going to talk to the Titan Network crew and discuss our options. Buy the IP and code outright? License it to run on our own server and obtain the rights to distribute the client? Maybe look into some options around releasing source code, if possible? What to offer people as rewards and incentives to invest in the crowd fund? If we're successful, do we want to carry the game forward as free-to-play, use a similar hybrid model that Paragon Studios has set up now, or charge some nominal subscription fee to cover hosting costs?
Next week, I'm going to start rattling cages at Paragon Studios. I have exactly zero contacts with NCsoft (unless you count Katie, the PR person we met at the Player Summits). I plan on contacting the folks I know and trying to get some kind of meeting set up where I can talk to the powers-that-be who can actually make a deal with us to run the game. I'd also like to start putting feelers out to the devs to gauge interest in continuing to work on the game in some capacity, either on a contract or volunteer basis, whatever we can afford and they're willing to contribute.
Anyway, my head is still swirling, and now I'm going to be up all night. I really appreciate all of your support in this, and I will do my damnedest to make sure I don't let you down.
As I told someone earlier, we've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time. (In fact, I'm thinking that might be our catch phrase.) 8)
-
I sent an email to kickstarter this evening, asking if a "buy the development studio and IP" project is allowed by their terms. There are also other funding sites. http://www.indiegogo.com/
I am also hoping to get the name of a good IP lawyer. I am very happy to assist in any way possible.
-
Also: I have been told The Chive can drive a lot of attention to causes, though I do not frequent the site. Is anyone here a Chiver?
-
I am indeed a Chiver....I will look into seeing what I can do, but I'm not sure. If anyone else here are chivers, please, please please please....assist me in this endevour....KCCO
-
This would in all likelyhood result in alot of people coming out of the woodworks to assist in things like coding, etc. I'm not sure how viable the F2P would be (or any sub in general) as many might view it as the game being run by the B-team. I'd hate to simply have it be an archive, but I would recomend possibly finding a way to consolidate things to a single-server format (Phoenix, Ressurection, etc for names). Any new content could be focused on something like "CoX got nuked, many groups are obliterated, and you are a survivor".
Silly as it is, the only thing I can think about right now is saving my toons before they pull the plug. :-/
-
I do have a question. Before I go talk to theChive at all, is there anything in particular I should say? I personally am not very good at making these sorts of requests, and I would very much appreciate anyone's input on what should be said/asked.
Edit: Also, I really think we should hold off on trying to mobilize the Chivers until we find out if we will be able to get NCSoft to sell off CoX to us or not, and even before see what everyone at Titan Network agrees on options wise.
However....When the time comes, and we are ready to go forth with whatever plan we have, I will gladly be the one to bring our plight to theChive and see if they will mobilize the Chivers in our aid.
-
I am willing to help financially as far as I am able. You have provided a great service to all of us through the years, and we are thankful. Just the fact that you are even thinking of doing this and giving us a ray of hope, makes you a true hero to all of us "would be heroes"! Please let us know if you ever need anything, for I see that you have quite the following now - :D.
-
I admire what you guys are trying to do here. I'm replying to show my support and to mark this thread to keep an eye on it. Not sure how much I would be able to contribute, I would certainly be in for contributing to a kickstarter project if an opportunity to purchase exists.
-
I don't know how much this will mean, but I am a professional writer and RPG designer.
If you need someone to do some cheap freelance work (For CoX, we're talking FREE cheap) for storylines and to continue things, I'll toss my hat into the ring.
I'm used to working inside the limitations of an engine, used to working with ruleset and within the constraints of an existing world/vision.
Just hit me up if you think you might need my services.
-
Keep us posted, Tony! I don't have much in terms of monetary resources, but I will do what I can to help with this effort!
-
o.o let us know how we can help!
also, if you need connections to NCsoft, try asking some of the Community Reps and Devs to forward a letter for you or get you in contact. Most of the higher lvl devs have dealt with random NCsoft managers for years, so can probably get it to who needs to know.
>_> to bad our hands are more or less tied till we hear back on if they're even willing to let it go or make a deal.
-
Tony,
As I talked with you on Skype about. I shot an e-mail off to my partners at Catalyst Game Labs.
It's possible (though HOW possible I don't know yet) that, for access to the literary and tabletop-game-related IP, they might be able to help. At least some.
It's probably NOT going to be in tens of millions of dollars. We're still a small company doing somewhere around 2-3 mil this year.
Short aside: How do you make a small fortune in the gaming industry?
Answer: Start with a larger one! *BA-DUM-BUM!*
Like your communications with Paragon and NCSoft, nothing much will probably move until after the holiday. But I'll keep in touch with you on this.
-
I sent an email to kickstarter this evening, asking if a "buy the development studio and IP" project is allowed by their terms. There are also other funding sites. http://www.indiegogo.com/
I am also hoping to get the name of a good IP lawyer. I am very happy to assist in any way possible.
Actually it is, believe it or not...
One of the Shadowrun games was being Kickstarted this way.
-
o.o that one just ended right? and in that case they already had the IP, not trying to aquire it.. still, if NCsoft has a price, the kickstarter can probably be worded to get by...
-
Like a couple of other people, I just want to chime in here to support what you're trying to do, and to say that I'd definitely donate to any attempt to keep CoH going. Good luck.
-
Wishng you all the best of luck and full support. Though i have the feeling you'll need it.
Either way, let CoH always burn in our heart.
-
Well, while I am a coder, only language I'm any good at is LISP, and only experience is with engineering apps.
But I'd be willing to chip in a grand or two for this.
-
I too would like to toss my hat in to help anyway possible. Writing stories, coming up with ideas, and designing stuff are all right down my alley, as well as deciphering most code.
-
Hi chaps
We've been discussing similar notions on Defiant last night and I mentioned you chaps as having the best fan network to the game. I'm sure many of us on the EU will be heading this way - I'll be doing my best to point them here anyhow.
One of the bigger rumours seems to be that it's Atari that's been the primary cause for canning the game by forcing the licence price for the IP through the roof. If that's true, there's probably no chance they'd let a fan base take over the IP even on a licence arrangement. I'm not totally sure I believe it but it's certainly one of the more credible explanations. The game has been steadily profitable by all accounts.
Here's a couple of suggestions that I'm just throwing out there as discussion points to be take up/thrown away as necessary - brainstorm if you like, but here are some potential options to maybe consider if we can't somehow save the day.
- Virtual Worlds: It would be relatively simple to recreate bits of Paragon and the Isles in a virtual world. Second Life is the best known of those but there are many others and land in others is (generally) a bit cheaper. The mechanics of the game aren't as good, but it does give an opportunity to hang out and RP and as a community project could run alongside anything else in the interim
- Take our characters to a pen & paper system such as the http://roll20.net/ system - again, not ideal but we can at least keep the spirit alive for very low cost and hopefully have some fun RP adventures
- Invest in a game engine and make our own superhero game. Fraught with difficulties - but what's life but a series of challenges followed by death, right? It's not as crazy as it first seems - there's some good Open Source engines out there that can be had for very little and some proprietary ones that are cost effective too. We know there's a lot of talent out in the community that can then create a game - it's simply a case of getting the talent in the same room
That's what I have after about 15 hours after hearing the news.
-
Hey, everyone.
I will take this as a reply to the message I sent you yesterday, TonyV ;-)
I'm with Riff above, and I would like to once again offer any help I can to make this happen. Ideally, to keep the game alive, and if not for any of the options he offers.
Let's work together to keep this game alive. Stay strong! :-D
-
I have to add my support to this, City of Heroes can't go out like that. You want sub fees? You got them, whatever support I can give, despite being remarkably untalented, is yours.
-
I would also contribute both monetary and other means if possible. Can't say that I've got loads to give, but for CoH, I'll spare some of it.
-
I'm certain that together, we can all pull this off without too much concern as long as NCSoft is open to some form of resolution to keep the servers up.
-
Let here be known that I would like to help any endeavour to keep a CoX server alive, for too many MMORPG out there are being stopped without considering the feelings of the players that forever are withdrawn of the right to play "their" game, not even because of the technology going forward, but because of business decisions like these.
Let here be known that, despite not being quite active for the community in the past years, I can no less program a bit. I know C/C++, java, (I don't think they used Ada and Ocaml, but I know these too), I also have notions of graphical and network programming, and I also have a quite strong, logical and mathematical mind. I also speak French in addition to english (for any translation restoration plan).
Let here be known that, for at least 2 years, I could devote a substanciate monthly stipend to any endeavour or sustainment needed for servers, like 4 or 5 monthly subscription. I would prefer not giving a large sum upfront.
That is what I want to give.
I also want to underline the problem that NCSoft is going to be against any kind of continuation of service that is not under their control (or to their profit), because CoX will be going up against their online games. Time spent playing City is not spent paying a subscription for {insert NCSoft game here}. If we want to continue playing, to compensate for that shall only be leverage for ourselves. Be aware, be wise, it'll only get easier.
-
Echoing the support. I'm a journalist, and I moonlight in PR and social media campaigns . If I can help in those capacities, please just let me know.
At the very least, I will donate to any kickstarter (etc) campaign to help make this a reality.
-
Also echoing support. This was such a stupid, stupid, stupidstupid/stupid/ decision on NCSoft's part.
-
Nbody mentionned the petition on change.org, you can also use that. Here is the link:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city-of-heroes
Sign as well, if you didn't, this can only help out.
-
I'm also willing to help. I haven't trespassed into the server/development side of MMO's, but I've been writing short fiction & pencil/paper game adventures since the 80s, and was head administrator on a successful MUD for a decade or so. So I'm willing to help with the design-end (if this project gets that far) but I'm also willing to contribute what I can toward the financial end as well.
Good luck, the hopes of a lot of heroes and villains are going with you.
-
AS mentioned on the official boards, I just want to voice out that I'm there to help in whatever ways I can: time and/or money...
I just want to point out that at least one game survived and flourished in the underground : Falcon 4.0 which was released by Microprose in 1998 and that should have died when this company closed. the community picked up some code and gradually evolved it (flight model, graphics etc..). In 1998 Falcon 4.0 was the best combat flight sim around and today Falcon BMS is the best combat flight sim around ! (and it is free...)
So maybe there is hope... not a bright hope, but hope...
Again, feel free to call on the goodwill of the volunteers when needed. We will answer the call !
-
I've kept a subscription going for CoH for about three years now. Two subscriptions for about 6 months less than that. Three subscriptions for another six months less.
I have limited experience coding in about a dozen languages, ranging from Scripting to Programming to Markup languages (as well as pre-existing plans to more thoroughly learn a language at some point soon, I've been buying coding books for a couple languages).
I have experience in being admin on a half dozen forums.
I have experience being a manager for a small organisation (still learning!).
I have all this and so much more.
I offer what I have, if it can be used, to help get CoH moving again.
Keep us updated.
Regards,
The man with a thousand names. (I get around)
-
Expect a decent number of new members here (like myself) to keep in touch with any plans re: survival of CoX. I'm a long time CoHer, and used Mid's waaaaay back in the day (thanks!).
As with so many, I will do what I can in the money / time / talents department.
Thank you again for thinking about trying.
"Planet Girl"/Virtue
-
We don't have much at all, but count DamienRay & Mamma in. We'll do what we can to support the cause ! Don't let the City die !
I REALLY hope there is a big bright light at the end of this tunnel. :)
-
Thank you for this. Just posting to say you have my support.
-
I have been playing this game since almost the beginning and I cannot see it closing down. I will contribute in any way I can. I am not tremendously wealthy but I will definitely give as much as I can to keep the game going. I have had so many awesome memories of playing with this game that I want to give back to the community that is truly the best in the MMO world.
-
Signed up just to say this: If you manage to pick up the codebase, you've got a developer on staff.
I've never felt sad like this about such news... especially considering that Lineage II is still running. o_O How is that right, NCSoft? Oi. ::headshake::
-
-
Not a long time player...just over a year......but I was hooked and I loved it......I probably wouldn't be much use for anything other than advertising on my sites, but you will have that no matter what :)
Just registered so I could let you all know you have my support!
Dylan Clearbrook (global @Nebularian)
-
Must be something we can do or somebody that can help us. I remember when EA shutdown westwood studios and westwood online and eventually the effort of the community and fan sites paid off and they were able to obtain the westwood online server. Starwars galaxies also has private servers dating back to Pre-Cu and Pre-nge despite it being shut down eventually.
Even if they outright refuse to release the game to us someone out there somewhere will figure out a way to make a private server. I know I can't be the only one that would always have an empty feeling inside of me if this turns out to be the end.
-
Long time CoX player here and first time visitor to the Titan Network. Just wanted to say that I'm on board with this as well. Happy to contribute time, energy and/or money and if any graphic design skills are needed, I can contribute those too. Let's do our best to see Paragon City rise from the proverbial ashes here...
-
Hi all,
I also would like to help save COH. I am freelance writer/graphic artist and while I am not wealthy, I would contribute to a kickstart program. This is an awesome game with an amazing community. I still numb and trying to process all of this but let me know what I can do to help.
Regards,
Bill aka Zeph El, Liberty Server
-
I wouldn't be much help in developing (even if I might be able to code to save my life ;) ) or PR.
But I'd be willing to pay and play. 8)
-
I'll be glad to donate time, money, and support to whatever main project becomes of this. I can also lend some scripting and environment skills.
I may not be made of money but I will pledge half of what is currently going to retirement to be redirected to this project. Yes - I'm that serious.
-
Very interested in this. I have no problem giving my vip fees to you.
I suspect, with the way this has been handled, this is the result of legal action, however.
-
Long time CoH'er..Started playing July of the first year, and my second account was started up 2-3 years after that. i don't have much money right now, but if there is anything I can contribute to help I will.. i'm just utterly shocked and saddened by NCSoft's sudden turn of events.
-
I am a long time player and appreciated this effort. Am willing to help in anyway I can. Keep us up to date. Guardian has a Facebook page and I am assuming other servers or player do as well, try to get a hold of people there too...
Again much appreciated
-
I am a long time COH player been there since day 2, I will do anything I can to help save this game, if kickstarter is allowed I will give all I can whenever I can. I am so happy you are considering trying and saving this game.
-
Thanks, TonyV. Got the page bookmarked and I'll be watching with keen interest.
Like most of us I'll be little help as a financial "white knight"... but if/when a fund starts up, I'll donate whatever meager crumbs I find under the refrigerator.
Oh, that, and I'm a cartoonist/comic artist, so if/when a project gets underway (whether it's the present game on some sort of life support, or a bold independent attempt at a "new CoH" that simply shrugs off the lost IP and starts anew), you'll be hearing from me. You'll have my sword, and my bow, and my axe, and whatever other junk I can pick up at the Renaissance Faire.
'Til then, stay strong, everyone. I have a feeling we'll be meeting again for Costume Contests under a statue, somehow, somewhere. Whether it's the one in Atlas Plaza is NCsoft's call now; they don't have a strong track record for doing the right thing, but who knows? Maybe, lounging around the state-of-the-art private gym in their expensive, lavishly appointed HQ they'll have an epiphany and decide to try "thinking outside the box".
Yours Truly,
The Copper Cockroach
Virtue's #1 cockroach-themed Dark/Rad Controller since 2012
-
I am here to show my support I am willing to commit my subs for 2 accounts I know it's not much but it's better then nothing please keep CoX alive
-
We don't have much at all, but count DamienRay & Mamma in. We'll do what we can to support the cause ! Don't let the City die !
I REALLY hope there is a big bright light at the end of this tunnel. :)
**Indeedy, Damien and I will do anything we possibly can. ;)
-
Long time player here too since Beta March 2004, played on and off last 2 yrs but been around for a total of 8+ years
You have support from myself also!
I know there is a friend of mine on facebook trying to turn over many rocks to save CoH also
Maybe you both can put your heads together?
He says he lives 2-3hr drive from the main office
A lot has come from CoH hubby & I met a friend though coh that introduced us back in the summer of 2004... we got married Valentines day 2005 after he drove 14hrs to me in Canada from the midwest USA.... if it wasn't for CoH none of this would of ever happened... and here we are almost 8yrs later, CoH always has been a bit part of our lives even tho hubby stopped playing back in 2007ish I still played on
email me if you need any info on my friend also trying to pull some strings, I hope this all can be worked out some how :gonk:
Thanks Tony!
-
Linked here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showpost.php?p=4370540&postcount=249
@TonyV, You've got 8 people here from Liberty and Protector that are willing to put money towards this goal every month. We can each give $20 a month indefinitely for this. It's not much, but that's the thing about snowflakes... each snowflake isn't much. It's when they get together that they're an unstoppable force of nature, an avalanche.
I've often pondered why this game is so good, and so important to me.
Is it the players? ...yes somewhat, but most of the people I play with I know outside this game and know and care for them.
Is it the Devs? ...Yes! Very much so. I've never ever played any game where the Devs are as responsive and kind, committed and considerate, creative and compassionate as this one. They make my day, so many days.
But mostly, you know what it is? I'm an American patriot living in a post-modern world where heroism is gauche, passion for a cause is passe, and apathy is ubiquitous.
In Paragon City... there are heroes, and I get to be one. I don't have to play it cool when I see something I don't like. I can jump in and make a difference. All of my 54 characters when playing and moving through the city and see some Hellion or Outcast jackwagon stealing some poor woman's purse will stop and pulverize the slackwit and send him to the Zig's infirmary with a love note attached, even if I'm a high-tier incarnate.
Why? Because I'm a hero in Paragon City.
I have an 8 year old little girl. This summer I signed her up with a freebie account, edited her chat channels (for the sake of her mental virginity), and commenced to play with her with my wife. Because she wants to be a hero, too. (She burst into tears when I gave her the news.)
Inside every person, there is a seed of nobility. We all long to be better than we are, in a world where people act out of altruism, rather than selfishness; a world where self-sacrifice is noble, not gullible.
Paragon City was that world for me for 8 years. If it is within my power, it will stay that way. If it is not within my power, I pray to God that He change it to be so.
So yes. I will try to be a hero one more time. @TonyV, consider me in your Supergroup for this fight. I will rise to the occasion. Tell me what I can do, for I am a Hero on the inside, and I will not stand idly by.
__________________
Happy gaming!
-SunderX
**Making Altaholism a socially acceptable disorder**
"A Scrapper is like a chainsaw. Quite hard to handle, very dangerous, and by far the most fun when wielded by the slightly insane." -Alissara
-
I am a seven-year, constitutively paying COH/V customer who would gladly port over my monthly VIP fees (plus a Kickstarter-esque bonus) for this effort. Titan and TonyV, thank you for your past and continued contribution to this fundamental MMO. Please add me to any present / future mailing list and count on my support.
-Seismic Burn (Infinity)
-
I don't have much in the way of extra resources these days, but I am willing to give what I can in financial support. What I DO have is some contacts in the Game Podcasting world, so as soon as some sort of plan is put in place, I will spread it to as many of them as I can in hopes that extra publicity will help. Keep us posted on all the developments.
-
Here's another thought. If they don't want to sell it convince them to donate it charity. (in this case us being charity) and they can write it off as a tax write off ;) Companies like this love tax write offs.
-
and they can write it off as a tax write off
I'm not sure if that works the same way in South Korea.
-
I want to say thank you to Tony and all of you at Titan for helping to get us organized. I wanted to join the others in professing how much I love this game and while I can't offer much, but all that I can spare I will gladly donate to the cause. Succeed or fail I am proud to call myself a member of this community /e salute
-
If you decide to ask for kickstarter/donations/subscriptions/whatever I suddenly have the money that NCSoft doesn't want from me free :P
A salute to you o>
-
I registered just to say this:
I've got some overtime pay coming in the next couple months. I may as well spend some of it on this. If NCSoft's willing to sell the game, and you start fundraising, I'm on board.
-
I have played CoH since day one and would be honored to help. I am not rich but would gladly pay $20-25 a month to keep the doors open.
-
You have my support for this action. Keep up the good work!
-
You have an army behind you Tony, and I want to be part of it.
I simply will not stand idly by while six-seven years of my life is at risk of fading away.
City of* has always been there for me through all those years. I may have dipped off to indulge in new games for a few weeks every now and then, but I could always come back to Co* and knew it would be there. My reliable stalwart companion; creative and social outlet.
The City has been there for me, now I need to be there for the City.
I'm prepared to put the vast majority of my income behind you, by that I mean around 80% - once I've shaved off a section for my share of the bills the rest is literally all spending money and you can have it.
I also have a lump sum coming in from personal reasons and I've specifically earmarked all of it towards this project. Google converter says it equates to a couple thousand dollars (British pound here).
I will do my part to prop this project up even if it breaks my bones.
-
There's something important we should do pretty soon - establish an unofficial offical CoH forum - there are a huge amount or lurkers and first time posters on the main forums right now, and I think it's vital that we let them know where the community will be gatheringonce the offical forums go down.
Can the Titan forums handle the load/mod requirements?
-
Long time CoX player with 2 subs (long time as in from EU launch). Just registered to say any way I can help I will.
Certainly I'll get in on any kickstarter type thing. I'd be happy to keep on paying subs (even more per month than I was paying NCSoft)
Just know you guys aren't alone in this.
Thanks
-
We should contact the guys from badge-hunter/vidiotmaps, they could unite with us, if they so wish, of course. I'm sorry if this is already done (didn't read the gazillions of post on the official forum yet, nor do I know the guy in charge)
If anybody knows and can contact other sites like this, it should be done. I'll try to get the french wiki's effort in here.
-
You have my complete support! I will be happy to help anyway I can my email is bignallconnor@yahoo.com! Let me know and I will do what ever it takes. I have already signed the petitions, written to Valve and and NCsoft and I want to do so much more! I was going to email Kickstarter and ask if we could do this as well but I am glad to see anyone on it. I have never done this but I love CoH I am willing to let you contact me personally. My number is (Number removed PM if you would like to get in touch personally or email me) my name is Connor but you can call me TJ (Taceus Jiwede in CoH) PLEASE keep me informed! CoH will not go down without a fight!
-
I've ran two accounts for over four years and would happily keep paying even if there was a never another update.
If NC don't want my money, I'd happily give it to you.
So much flexibility in this game, I can't imagine another game to take it's place. Whatever funding I can give you, I will. CoX has been my entertainment for a long time.
Petition signed; letters tomorrow. Let's hope one way or another we can keep CoX alive.
-
Let's hope one way or another we can keep CoX alive.
A server, the costume creator, and Atlas Park - that's all we need, and then we can take it from there.
-
I'm a retired airman with professional programming experience, mostly in database systems and stand-alone Flash apps. I've done just enough work with a very simple game engine to know how tough it must be to put together a real game. (I had to red-light a military project that would have required way too many resources for the result.) I have a lot of experience with linux, C (not C++), Python, Javascript (not Java), Actionscript, etc. I'm also good at producing documentation in the baroque, government style.
Perhaps most importantly, I have lots of free time these days. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help beyond money, which I'll certainly give all of that I can spare.
-
I may be new to the forums here on the TN, but I have been supporting CoX since the closed beta. They had my support all along, and now you do too.
From the voices of us that can remember when you had to get on and off of the tram at each stop (best QoL update ever!)... lets make this happen.
-
I'm all in for saving City of Heroes in some fashion.
If its not possible to save CoH as we know the game, saving the names, background story and rights to make CoH2 or a spiritual successor would be good too. Things have advanced quite a bit in the computer world since CoH's launch in 2004 and a grass roots effort to make a new game by players for players would be a nice way to tell all of the competition we don't need them to enjoy ourselves.
While I am very sad at the annoucement of CoH being shut down, I see this as a kick in the pants to players that maybe just maybe its time for players to be the real heroes. I'd say lets form Titan Studios and make our own game.
-
I suggest a visual protest on their forum, where we post pictures similar to mine. unfortunately I cannot post on their, I just got back from a year hiatus and can't post it on the forum myself so if someone could post this image for me I would be grateful!
BTW I am a design guy that works for a small design company so if there is anything I can do to help let me know!
Please post this on the heroes forum for me if you could please, and start the movement! :-)
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img713.imageshack.us%2Fimg713%2F1320%2Fcohforever.png)
-
Tyvm, TonyV.! Consider my VIP subscription fee a done deal. It's little but it all adds up, As an 8+ years vet, and survivor of the COV closed beta, I can't give up on this world and community At that, it's a small enough price to hang onto my sanity and loved friends!
@Tessa (too many characters to even begin...)
-
I can offer my 25 years of programming experience, Java/C/C++ and so on, etc. Some financial support (hundreds, not thousands) for tools and the like, as well. Time is more of a challenge, but apparently I will have more free time than I expected, soon...
I do agree with GG's assessment. You give people even just Atlas Park to take their character out for a spin once in a while, they'll be back for a long long time.
Not sure how Titan's management works: you've been able to do the distributed volunteer workforce thing for quite some time, as I understand it. I do know that several projects like this that I've been a part of in the past have fallen apart mainly due to project management and leadership challenges. Keeping people on task while real-life constantly intrudes is a bear even when people are getting paid... volunteers make it that much more difficult. And I imagine I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, so I'll just zip it on that.
Any verification of the rumors re: engine re-licensing from Cryptic being the reason for the shutdown? Might drive the action a different way if that's the case...
Never mind... Zwillinger posted earlier mildly debunking that. My bad.
-
Another long-time player from the EU here who is willing to do what he can.
I'm not wealthy, but have been paying my subs for over 7 years, plus buying extra packs and such, so that sort of ongoing support I can commit. Coding and programming is limited, though I've done a little, mostly in web development, but I know a lot about websites. Where my skills may be applicable is that I'm a veteran in Internet Marketing and web based business.
-
I truly hope we can make this happen, I have no idea how this stuff goes, but I've been playing CoH since near the start and I can't imagine it going away. Anything I can do to help.
-
A server, the costume creator, and Atlas Park - that's all we need, and then we can take it from there.
Agreed, while it won't be the same city, it'll be Our city. It'll be about rebuilding and showing that we are not a playerbase, but a fully fledged community!
Single server is a great idea as it'll be easier to manage. If we pull this off, then maybe we can rook an offline character/base creator in the process!
-
I've only posted on the official CoH forums a handful of times (not with this name but with my Global alias) and didn't even know about this site, but I've been playing off and on since the beta and I'm here to offer whatever help I can to keep this game alive. I don't want to see 8 years of a wonderful game and community go down the drain just because a money hungry corporation made a very bad decision. So count me in to help with rescue efforts!
-
Just to mention...it likely goes without saying but if your sourcing ideas DO look feasible, I'll happily pony up any monthly fees I'd planned to give NCSoft to you folks, or whoever gets the rights and IP! A half-dozen more of my coalition members are long-term subscribers who will happily do the same, and I'm pretty sure of two dozen more as well...but with the chaos and dismay recently I haven't exactly been pressing for firm commitments over monthly fees..
Has anyone contacted the devs themselves to see if any of them want to/can help with these efforts? I'd have thought that if Paragon Studios had had any notice of this the devs might have scrambled to become an offshoot company by buying their own IP/codebase. Do they maybe have a project forming already that WE could help /them/ with?
-liz
-
Hello, @Indo-Lady from Virtue here. I've been lurking around the forum for sometime and found out about this sad news. I'm glad to see that the community isn't giving up without a fight. I lack any skills that could be of use, but I might be able to contribute monetarily. Thank you for everyone's work and support for this game.
-
Heya! @AtomBuster from Triumph here. I know a fair bit of graphic and Web design and would be willing to pay at least the original subscription costs (perhaps a bit more) to help save CoH!
In the words of the President in the film Independence Day:
"We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We're gonna live on, we're gonna survive."
-
Agreed, while it won't be the same city, it'll be Our city. It'll be about rebuilding and showing that we are not a playerbase, but a fully fledged community!
Single server is a great idea as it'll be easier to manage. If we pull this off, then maybe we can rook an offline character/base creator in the process!
Offline character creator is actually a natural byproduct and stepping stone to a full server, so odds are good one will be popping up.
-
Offline character creator is actually a natural byproduct and stepping stone to a full server, so odds are good one will be popping up.
I actually think once upon a time CoX did have an offline character creator but I don't know if it still exists/is floating around the web.
-
I actually think once upon a time CoX did have an offline character creator but I don't know if it still exists/is floating around the web.
I think that it was part of the Asian version, as some kind of promotional tool.
-
That might've been it, yeah.
-
If this info would be of any use (however I'm almost certain half of you are already aware), there was a CoX emulation project going on for a while. I'm not sure if it's still active, was ever completed, or if it was abandoned. However it was called S.E.G.S.
From what I know they were reverse engineering the coding for CoX or something.
Links:
http://redmine.nemerle.eu/
http://segs.nemerle.eu/forumz/index.php
-
I'm extremely excited that someone had this idea. I would prioritize getting the IP first. Codebase second. Server third. Volunteers can work on the code for sure. And I'll help try to contact the dev team to see if they are trying anything like this themselves.
-
Well... there is the offline CoH creator. It's not perfect, but it certainly works. I still have a copy around here somewhere... forget who made it.
EDIT: I believe it is Heroe side only. Unsure. I'll find it, fire it up and post back later.
-
Hi, I saw your posts on the forum, and I too want to help in anyway I can.
Thank you for taking the initiative.
-
We should contact the guys from badge-hunter/vidiotmaps, they could unite with us, if they so wish, of course. I'm sorry if this is already done (didn't read the gazillions of post on the official forum yet, nor do I know the guy in charge)
If anybody knows and can contact other sites like this, it should be done. I'll try to get the french wiki's effort in here.
I'm not "the guy in charge," but I'm already here and "ah've got me sum Maps!" ;)
-
Definitely will be behind this. Watching and waiting for updates.
-
I haven't had the chance to read through all of the thread yet but I am 100% behind the idea to purchase the IP and assets for CoH. I'm also studying to become a web developer so I will gladly throw my hat into the ring to offer my skills in web design to support CoH.
-
Hi gang,
First post at Titan. Just wanted to say that I would gladly contribute to keep COH going. I was happy to spend cash on a subscription and points each month..... Anything from $25 to $50 (really).
If anyone starts a Kickstarter or real fund drive, I would gladly support Tony V and CoH for an initial donation of $500 this year, and the same every year ongoing.
If you can spare $1.50 per day, you can do the same :)
If you feel the same, speak up!
Versitan3@gmail.com
-
Good to see other Runners and Drekkers in on this. I agree that Catalyst can hopefully help. I've been contacting those I know left and right, just awaiting word. There's at least one celeb interested in helping with funding, and some old school Internet movers and shakers, too.
For those who want a community to join off CoH, Rowr has an Internet Relay Chat server at irc.spiritwood.net, main channel #virtue. Please come join us, and contact me on AIM, Yahoo, Google, or globally CoH as Cygnata.
We can do this, everyone. We just gotta do everything we can.
-
I was just looking at the petition to keep NCSoft from Shutting down CoH, and it currently has 7,870 signatures. If each of those people were willing and able to donate $100 for the purpose of purchasing the CoH IP and assets, that would be $787,000 we could offer to NCsoft. Jesus! That's 3/4 of $1,000,000!!!!!
-
There's another potential time limit problem too - it's possible that on December 1st, NSCoft will wipe the character database, because as far as they'd be concenred, there'd be no need to keep it.
-
There's another potential time limit problem too - it's possible that on December 1st, NSCoft will wipe the character database, because as far as they'd be concenred, there'd be no need to keep it.
That might end up being just one of the casualties of this transition, should it succeed in the first place. I think the focus should be on getting ahold of the rights to the game, and then the code and everything else.
I guess we'd also have to see about either licensing or buying the old Cryptic engine?
I'm keeping an eye on this topic. When the time comes to start collecting money, I totally intend to chip into that.
-
Just wanting to add myself to this thread. Really glad someone is taking the initiative on this. I'll be glad to help out any way I can (I have some useful skills).
Does anyone know Meggan Russell, who evidently started the petition on change.org. I am glad to see the support coming in (approaching 8000 at this point), but there are a few things we could improve (eg. add an image to make it more visual). I think her handle on the CoX board is Cenes, though I have not had any luck reaching her there.
I think it's important that we coordinate our efforts and not just have bit and pieces all over the place.
Thanks
- Xenos
-
There's another potential time limit problem too - it's possible that on December 1st, NSCoft will wipe the character database, because as far as they'd be concenred, there'd be no need to keep it.
I think this is why I am revved on getting started asap. There is a LOT we could be doing with the time we have left here. Video caps. Screen caps. Packet caps. Divide and conquer. Someone setup a task list, take it by maps, and dole it out. Shouldn't we take precautions? Just a thought.
-
I just want to say, to hell with F2P. I can, will, and WANT to pay to keep CoH alive, and I hope everyone else feels the same. Like it or not, ultimately, you vote with dollars.
-
There's another potential time limit problem too - it's possible that on December 1st, NSCoft will wipe the character database, because as far as they'd be concenred, there'd be no need to keep it.
IF we (or anyone) announce the intention to buy out CoH way before then, and they allow a purchase, they'll keep it around.
-
The other huge time related problem is the dev team - they have themselves and their families to support, and it's not that long until Christmas - they quite rightly can't really just hang around not looking for a new job in the hope that we can organize some kind of miracle - so even of we did get something going, unless it was soon, then the dev team would have been dispersed.
-
The other huge time related problem is the dev team - they have themselves and their families to support, and it's not that long until Christmas - they quite rightly can't really just hang around not looking for a new job in the hope that we can organize some kind of miracle - so even of we did get something going, unless it was soon, then the dev team would have been dispersed.
It's quite likely that, should Titan succeed in getting CoH in their own hands, that they would have to assemble an entirely new dev team. But hopefully some or most of that team would come from among us the players.
-
The other huge time related problem is the dev team - they have themselves and their families to support, and it's not that long until Christmas - they quite rightly can't really just hang around not looking for a new job in the hope that we can organize some kind of miracle - so even of we did get something going, unless it was soon, then the dev team would have been dispersed.
I agree completely. If they're to find a miracle, it's us who will have to bring it to them. Otherwise the realities of life work against us.
-
I posted this on the COH board as well. But wanted to just paste it here as well, so I know you get to see it.
I am just a web designer, but I will do anything I can to help. This game is very important to my son. To my whole family as a matter of fact. My husband and I play as well. However, my son has a social phobia and this game has LITERALLY helped him come out of his shell a bit. He has friends on here that he has actually met in person and hung out with. Which for a mom with a kid with a social phobia means a lot. So, when I say I will do anything I can to help....I mean it. I don't have a lot of money, but lets face it...I have thrown so much money at this game and all the COOOOOL things he thinks he has to have....quite frankly that just totally makes me mad at the moment. We had just bought him some Paragon points the other day. A bunch of them. He has spend birthday money on it and everything else. But, that really isn't the deal here...I am not really concerned about the money put into the game already by having three of my family members playing it for the past 4 years...I'm concerned about my son and others like him that see this game as more than just a game. Do you know what I mean????
Anyway, anything I can do to help.....let me know.
-
I'd fully expect that by the time we get a full server up and running most of the developers (hopefully all of them) will once again be gainfully employed. Given that, I'd be happy if they were able to even participate in an advisory role.
-
Let's not forget existing projects that might merit attention, if all else fails. IRRC, SEGS is the vestige of the original server emulator that got squashed way back then. While it's been moving at a comatose snail's pace, the single developer has remained active. For the past year or so, I've also been working at my separate project (codenamed KiTTYWorld) that progressed at a similar rate.
The current situation is likely to provide some impetus for our projects...
-
Let's not forget existing projects that might merit attention, if all else fails. IRRC, SEGS is the vestige of the original server emulator that got squashed way back then. While it's been moving at a comatose snail's pace, the single developer has remained active.
When you get a chance, please PM information about this to Codewalker.
-
If you manage to get this off the ground, my services as videographer to try and advertise are at your disposal.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
-
Oh, snap. Boy did you just step into it without knowing it! You are at the top of my list of people I want to talk to about a couple of little projects I have in mind. Are you by any chance on Skype or some other voice chat software? Or would you prefer to talk directly via phone?
-
Hey guys,
Never really posted over here, but have had a titan key for a while.
While I doubt there's much I can do to help (though I do have some Networking knowledge it's rusty a a few years out of date) I just wanted to throw my support behind the project as a player, and say that if it comes to it, I will "transfer" my NCSoft sub fee over your way if we make some progress, and will also donate what I can to help it happen if need be.
-
I posted to the City of Heroes LJ group, which is watched by almost a thousand players (and some current and former dev/community folk), so maybe we'll get some nibbles from over there. I directed them all to post here and not there, so we don't spread ourselves so thin.
-
I'd appreciate a locked thread about this which will be updated when there are updates about the effort. I'd pledge to a crowd funding project to save City of Heroes, so I'd love to know how this idea develops. Subscribing to a thread would be good for that, but not this thread, because I don't want to be alerted on every discussion post.
-
Myself and my fellow Strykers are at the ready to help, I can offer financial support to a limited sum as well as my time to try and get CoH saved!
-
I am not myself a CoX player (several free trials aside).
Got a link here from one of the comments on Rock Paper Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/01/hang-up-your-cape-city-of-heroes-to-close/), and I registered here just to say how awesome it is you are doing this. I will watch how your project is coming along and if it looks like you can really do something I may even donate just because the idea is so great.
I've had games die on me before and it's a shame how this happens to people's passions because something is not profitable anymore. It's understandable for a company to shut something down if they think it costs money, but like you guys are doing, a way for the community to continue the service in a non-profit or even remodelled profitable way is a win-win for everyone. Especially if NCSOFT still gets some sort of licensing money.
(I must admit I think what they would ask you for this is more than anyone can afford. They will want to keep hold of their own IP. If anything you might get a yearly license for some ridiculous amounts of money.)
But I'm hopeful for you and as I said I fully support the idea.
-
I just wanted to say that I wish you guys the best of luck with this effort, I really hope something good comes out of it.
-
Hi There
Long time member, just always too lazy to post, well I have experience in the business world, there is a reason for the announcement, a quick shutdown like this seems a little strange. I am sure if NCSoft are closing it down purely for financial reasons then an approach could probably be made to make it viable for both parties ( NCSoft and us the gamers ) I mean this by means of the gamers running the game to the same standard of VIP's and free gamers using the NCSoft engine and with money made paying NCSoft an annual fee for using the game coding. ( All businesses love free money ) It is a model that does appear to be working but maybe not well enough for NCSoft to keep it running. I am happy to help out in anyway possible in this approach, lending business views and also financial planning going forward.
-
That has to be the hope that NCSoft is willing to take a fee for license or sell. I would hope more for a license agreement.
-
I agree, a licence is the way forward, they are unlikely to sell...
-
Hi, my email is benn@4efix.com, and I very much want this project to succeed. I have been playing CoX since beta over eight years ago, and if I had my way I would be playing for another eight years.
I am an all around geek and professionally a computer consultant, but I do not have many deep tech skills, being more of a jack-of-all-trades and small business consultant, so I am not sure I have a lot to offer skill wise.
However, I would be pleased to either donate a lump sum of cash ($500?) to a kickstarter-esque fund to make this happen, or pay a monthly subscription up to $30 to 50/month indefinitely, or both. So if that becomes a helpful option, I would love a heads up.
IF this is going to happen - and I realize that this is a BIG if - could I **strongly** recommend that if given an option the codebase that gets used going forward is the one they had on the *beta* server with the issue 24 code already implemented? As great as City was before Issue 24, they weren't kidding when they referred to it as the "fix everything" patch - blasters, pool powers, new sets, etc.
Could this be in the back (or better yet, front) of someone's mind - a preferential treatment towards getting and implementing the Issue 24 codebase? I mean, if we are going to dream, why not dream big? If there's any chance to get the codebase, I can't see how it would lessen our chances one iota to be going after the I24 codebase.
Right?
Thanks for doing this guys. I feel to frightened to truly hope that it can happen - but on the other hand I am refreshing these pages often because I so NEED CoX to continue - just like we all do. My greatest hope is that you get the whole kit and caboodle - every zone, power, resource, incarnate ability, and all 24 issues of code, as well as perhaps the store stuff too.
And while it would be the icing on the cake to retain our previous characters, *please* know that I would be ecstatic even if I lost all my characters and had to start from scratch - ecstatic just to have City a place where I can continue to game. I've raised dozens of characters to 50, I can do it again. :)
Thanks, and I dearly hope that this comes to fruition. Contact me if you think there's *anything* I can do.
-
I'd be a little worried with getting the i24 codebase as I'm not sure how finished it was. But it does seem a shame to let that all go to waste. Ideally, the license would include not just the game and server code but the development tools as well. That would allow us to at least have volunteers continue making power tweaks and monthly story arcs. New powersets and more complex content would be a long term goal of course, unless we got Paragon staff to serve in an advisory role so that we had some idea of what we were doing at the start. I'm not great at coding directly, but I have some experience using toolsets to make content so I'd be able to help there. In addition to donating all my extra cash of course.
-
On a personal note:
Depending on when the Kickstart (or whatever we use) occurs, this might be my Christmas bonus.
Then my tax return can be my sub fee starter.
-
Don't forget. In situations like this, you need a lawyer. If we have a lawyer amongst our ranks, this would make the situation much more doable. We need good structure as well--a leader who accepts responsibility for the group. We need to coalesce into a machine whose sole purpose is to win. This will more than likely cost money to do. Be prepared to get ugly if they completely refuse to cooperate. Find out what you can in a friendly and cooperative matter, but if that fails, know that you might need to bring the hammer out. We need to know the REAL reason the game is being shut down, and the person we REALLY need to talk to in regards to this whole SNAFU. We can't let them blow smoke.
Most of all, we need to come at them from a position of power.
-
Speaking of needing a lawyer, anyone know how to reach Arcanaville? I'm pretty sure she (? that's the pronoun I've seen used I think) repeatedly informed everyone she was a lawyer. Also, even if she isn't able to help with the legal end her posts about the math behind the game were always extraordinary. She could be a valuable asset in any project to keep the game alive and/or reconstruct it.
Also, I'm willing to pay for the hosting of an unofficial official coh forums. If some of the web designers here are willing to make it look nice and/or help moderate of course.
-
Also, I'm willing to pay for the hosting of an unofficial official coh forums. If some of the web designers here are willing to make it look nice and/or help moderate of course.
I'll gladly volunteer to admin and design the forums. How close do we want them to be to the current design and layouts on the CoH Forums?
-
I'll gladly volunteer to admin and design the forums. How close do we want them to be to the current design and layouts on the CoH Forums?
Probably pretty close, but obviously with less of a focus on discussing in game activity. The look and feel should bring the feeling of "City of Heroes Forever". So I would think that would mean preserving the current look pretty closely, maybe with more of an image background along the edges and top though.
I can't find the image, but all I keep thinking of is that picture of Statesman's coffiin on the steps of city hall. It seems incredibly appropriate and I want to make it my wallpaper but I just can't find the thing.
-
Hi TonyV, just throwing my hat in the ring here. I realize I'm probably the *least* active developer to ever be involved with Titan (long story short, real life smashed me in the face right about the same time we started to collaborate), but this isn't some niche-in-a-niche-in-a-niche app we're talking about here now, is it? This is the very livelihood of our alter-egos at stake, and you can bet I'll do any- and everything I can to help out. My sister met her husband in Paragon City, for Pete's sake.
Feel free to Skype me - "epicduckmike" - if you need an extra hand on any PHP-related projects for this.
-
First let me express my thanks for trying to do this. My name is John Ransom. I would like to help if I can. If you need someone to volunteer as a programmer for the game I am the man. I currently work for GunWale Games http://www.gunwalegames.com/about.html. I have actually programmed for Cryptic Studios before on Star Trek Online. This was after CoH was sold to NCSoft so I never got to see the CoH code but I have MMO programming experience. I have an idea for how to consolidate the servers without anyone haveing to lose their character names. You can contact me at johnmr@ncc1701d.net if you want to talk about this more. Again thank you.
-
Alright, so I'm like an hour into searching for a good forum hosting site for the new official forums and I'm having difficulty. Anyone know any good places?
-
Hi TonyV,
I was thinking along the exact same lines when I was directed to your post. Though I am not a developer of CoH, I have extensive programming experience and infinite love for this game. If you ever do manage to get the rights/code/servers, and if you need help with development and/or game design, please drop me a line, and I'd be happy to help in a big way.
I can be reached at the e-mail: stronae at speakeasy dot net. (If you contact me through this, I'll happily share my CV.)
Thanks!
-
I would also help admin and help design the forum if you need help. No problems at all.
I also resell hosting through godaddy at www.touchoftech.biz The prices are really good. Just like godaddy's. Matter of fact...get ahold of me and and I will make it even better for you. Well us. Oh heck..just tell me what domain name you want and I will pay for it and year of hosting! :)
Let me know. I am here to help! :)
My skype name is jmeyer101.
-
Hey, guys, to all the programmers and people volunteering to help with the fallback project, hang out for a while and keep checking back. We definitely want to take advantage of all the talent we can.
At the moment we're trying to figure out the best way to organize the project and split up the work. As I'm sure you know, too many chefs working on any one particular piece can be counter-productive. So we're working on splitting up the work into discrete modules that can be worked on independently, and when that's ready we'll want to get some volunteers to work on writing those modules. Kind of a challenge to engineer something so big in a short amount of time but we're very driven and I'm confident it will happen.
C experience is the most useful, as we're aiming to make this beast as efficient as possible, since we won't necessarily have as beefy hardware to run it on as the official servers. But we'll need some external tools as well, so experience with anything at all can be put toward those.
-
I have some experience with EQ private servers. Might be able to help out with the database a bit, particularly npc creation and ability tweaking.
-
More of an OOPL coder here, but I'll be willing to help however I can.
-
Well I have no experience with dealing with programming or servers, I do however have experience in the world of dealing with Executive teams, business and marketing, although maybe not required in the short term with getting into the dealings of basics of the game running, in the future maybe I can be of assistance going forward. But of course I will do anything I can to keep the game alive.
-
I remember 10 years ago 'Crimson Skies' was popular. I was a devotee.
After Microsoft abandoned it, dedicated players with private servers ran the game. You joined their websites to get permission. Same thing happened to StarFleet Elite Force. I missed the game in it's hey day, but discovered it using peoples' servers.
I know these are probably simpler games...but I'm sure it's a possibility....maybe even run CoH with older issues to have less bugs to deal with.
I must have had 3 computer rebuilds playing the game.
-
I've no specific expertise to bring to bear, but you have my support and if it comes to the donating support you have that too. I once donated 'revenge' money to Samuraiko, I can donate for love as well.
-
Well, I don't often admit this, but I am an attorney, licensed in Texas. I do mostly real estate acquisition and eminent domain work, so this would squarely fall outside of my area of expertise. However, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Your best bet is to reach me by email at matthew.a.murray@gmail.com.
-
Well, I don't often admit this, but I am an attorney, licensed in Texas. I do mostly real estate acquisition and eminent domain work, so this would squarely fall outside of my area of expertise. However, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Your best bet is to reach me by email at matthew.a.murray@gmail.com.
You may indeed come in handy, *IF* we get past Step 1 (contacting NCSoft and making an offer) - then we may need an attorney to handle any final contracts. Definitely thanks for speaking up, though, it's good to keep all our resources at hand. :)
-
Just to join in with the other offers, I am a writer and although I've not done anything like this before I have an eye for canon and details, I would be more than happy to volunteer my time and the money I would have spent on my two accounts. I'm not spending money on any other MMO now.
-
I have setup the page that we are going to be putting the forum on. It is called www.cohforever.org, whoever wants to help with the creation/setting up/admin/moderators and all of that....just let me know. You can reach me on here for now... I have to be honest...I am in the middle of cooking lunch for my family.....but I just wanted to take the time out to let you know it had been acquired and we are working on it.
I also went ahead and registered www.cohforever.com. So let me know which one you want to be the main and I will point the other to it. I will start the process of installing a forum on there while I cook lunch..then we will get to work on the looks and setting up all the forums. If you all want to message me with your email addresses who want to help in the creation of the forums...TonyV that means you all as well. :) I think I will just go with a phpBB forum if that is okay with everyone...unless you have something better you would like to use.
-
Well, I don't often admit this, but I am an attorney, licensed in Texas. I do mostly real estate acquisition and eminent domain work, so this would squarely fall outside of my area of expertise. However, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Your best bet is to reach me by email at matthew.a.murray@gmail.com.
Not sure it matters, but the last thing that I read was that the physical servers were in Dallas.
Do we need IP law or corporate law?
-
Not sure it matters, but the last thing that I read was that the physical servers were in Dallas.
Do we need IP law or corporate law?
I imagine that we will need both eventually. But our need for any attorney at all is entirely contingent on NC Soft's and/or Perfect World's willingness to play ball.
-
I've been with CoH since shortly after release...off and on...but mostly on. I will gladly contribute whatever I can to support this. I'm blessed with multiple talents and some finances, so please continue to let us all know what is transpiring and how we can assist!
- Feint of Heart
-
Hey I to am willing to provide free work on the game if you get it I am very good at writing stories with in a world using preexisting characters and such. I am also willing to work on concepts like powers, content, Costume idea, hell I will run and get the damn coffee if you need me to. This game help me quit smoking, help my daughter get your reading level up and beyond her grade level, and so much more. I will also volunteer my time for fund raisers. I even can bring a Preforming Fire troop to anything you put together to help raise funds. My email is Riggs.Chaosstar@gmail.com and I am Riggs Wild on Facebook contact me with what ever I can do please.
-
Ok. The phpbb forum is up. Just up...not pretty or anything. You can start registering for it now and letting me know what you are willing to do to help with the customization and all of that. I figure we may as well get this going. :)
www.cohforever.org
I will even setup emails for all of you if that is what you want. Just let me know. Let's get this going so we can get everyone in one place and ORGANIZE. :)
-
I've been playing since 2005 and I'm still a bit dazed at the news. Have also been a big fan of Titan Network ever since the badge bug bit me. I don't know much about birthin' no MMOs, but I do know about writing and proofreading, so I'd be glad to offer that kind of service for any text we have to recreate or any other writing, even outside the game proper. (Oh MAN would it feel good to finally be able to fix all those glaring errors in the game!!)
I join the others who say they would be more than happy to pay a monthly sub to Titan to keep this game alive.
The huge response to this effort should give us all some hope. It's not impossible!
-
As i said in the other board, I cant offer much but a littl emoeny and goodwill, i know how it feels to lose a community and although I wa snot playing this last year much due to illness My sub never slipped once in five years I even had two going at one time, so good luck to you all I hope we can save COH as more than a memory, you neve rknow if a company sees this support they may back us up too. I mean I know TR died fast but we had years to get a community going, I tihnk old and new players will unite for this one, sure it seems hard right now but its not impossible. In short, good luck guys, you have my support.
-
Cross-posted from CoH forums because I wrote this long thing and may as well not waste it... :)
Remember that "Cryptic Studios" icon that used to be everywhere in the game? It was there because some of the characters, including Statesman, were still owned by them. I suppose at some point NCSoft decided they didn't want to pay the license fees anymore, so they had to remove the last of the Cryptic characters from the game.
Which makes the sudden "sunsetting" even more strange, because NC was asking so much work to be put in the game to free it from its licensing agreements and make it independent. They made an effort to spin off Paragon Studios and make it autonomous, and encouraged them to not slow down, but accelerate the issue release schedule. They haven't tried this hard for *any* other game in their stable. And after all that they just cut it off? All I'll say is, I don't understand the logic behind the decision.
Ok, that's not exactly true, the only logic that makes sense is if NCSoft is days, weeks away from closing its doors from lack of finances, and their only choice is to immediately stop anything that costs money - whether its profitable in the long run or not, because there wouldn't be a long run.
Actually I'm counting on that possibility. Because if that's true, it also explains why they haven't sold the game to another company, or even entertained offers before now (they didn't have the time). And it *may* also make them more open to offers, so they get an infusion of cash, and they divest themselves of the expense. Yes, I actually thought this through.
I also thought of the possibility that one offer draws *more*. Because CoH is a profitable game with a somewhat healthy population, if there is one announcement of intent to purchase, there may be more. There are several software companies out there who specialize in revitalizing and/or keeping alive older titles, like Lord of the Rings Online. I know some of you may not like some of them (Perfect World could possibly be a bidder as well, maybe even Blizzard, though they generally prefer in-house titles) but at this point? Anywhere but here is better.
Of course, as I've said before, this all depends on whether NCSoft wants to let go. It's conceivable that they're killing CoH because they planned to replace it, only they don't have the money now, so they'll sit on the property until they do. We could try to talk them out of that, or into some sort of licensing arrangement, though that's not a certainty either. Until we know for sure, we know nothing but possibilities. But possibility is also what we're hoping for.
-
Hi TonyV, just throwing my hat in the ring here. I realize I'm probably the *least* active developer to ever be involved with Titan (long story short, real life smashed me in the face right about the same time we started to collaborate), but this isn't some niche-in-a-niche-in-a-niche app we're talking about here now, is it? This is the very livelihood of our alter-egos at stake, and you can bet I'll do any- and everything I can to help out. My sister met her husband in Paragon City, for Pete's sake.
Feel free to Skype me - "epicduckmike" - if you need an extra hand on any PHP-related projects for this.
Hey ducklorange! You wanna help us customize the phpbb forum we have set up at www.cohforever.org
I just sent you a contact request on Skype.
-
If they have pulled the plug, then why run the game for 3 months, surely this will cost them money to run with nothing coming back the other way, Maybe ( Fingers crossed ) there is a reason for doing just this....
-
If they have pulled the plug, then why run the game for 3 months, surely this will cost them money to run with nothing coming back the other way, Maybe ( Fingers crossed ) there is a reason for doing just this....
I would bet on that being thanks to the efforts of the Paragon team begging for some leniency.
-
Some thoughts if we actually pull this off:
Server Hosting.
Figuring out server architecture will be very important. For instance does any on know if "freedom" for example is one physical server, or represents a series of server. Is each zone a server? How are these networked together?
If freedom is a cluster of servers, we might want to discuss only having one or two actual 'servers'. As i'm sure Titan is aware, server costs can be pretty pricey. For this type of project i think we should be looking for Cloud solutions, something that allows flexibility in server cost/resources.
I've found: https://www.dotcloud.com/ Has a great cloud setup. It's a fixed cost per server, doesn't fluctuate with bandwidth used. It's based on top of Amazon EC2, and also has some nice flexibility in regards to elasticity. In other words, spinning up more servers in a cluster and spinning them down automatically as demand requires. (this would require some server daemons to monitor resources etc.) Another benefit is, there is a 'dev' state, where there is no monthly cost while the server is in development mode only.
IF we're going with Cohforever.org we will need to setup subdomains for the individual servers. We'll also want a Wildcard SSL cert that covers *.cohforever.org. So instance1.cohforever.org can be secured, as well as cohforever.org.
Other thoughts in regards to the actual backend management of 'our' accounts for CoH. Currently they're merged into NCsoft account management. Which means in addition to building a new website, we'll also need to build a new backend account manager, that also hooks into the game servers. We'll need to figure out what languages these are sitting on currently. PHP, Java, .Net? A combination?
What about legal issues. In game game masters. Ticketing? bug reports? It seems like most of that part of the game is merged into NCsoft as well. So separating will prove a challenge. We'll most likely have to start from scratch, and pray there's an API we can take advantage of. Or we'll have to do some serious recoding of the game just to get it to work off of NCSoft servers.
I'm a PHP developer, and do system administration for web servers for the company i've been working at for the last 6 years. I would like to help, but between work and other projects, i'm not sure how much help i would be. However, happy to answer questions or brain storm solutions, you can reach me at dr.parham@gmail.com
-
That's why negotiating a buy-out would be the best - there'd be a transition period for the new studio to work with NCSoft to disengage the CoH account system from the main NCSoft one.
-
If they have pulled the plug, then why run the game for 3 months, surely this will cost them money to run with nothing coming back the other way, Maybe ( Fingers crossed ) there is a reason for doing just this....
Most likely this is a combination of what TheManga said, and the need to consolidate our accounts. If they shut it down from one day to the next, they would owe ALL of the VIPs some money. This way, whatever time we have prepaid will run out in those 3 month and it'll give them time to reimburse folks who have pre-paid for longer (hopefully). It's probably simpler this way.
The financial loss for player who have paid for items that they wouldn't be able to use is probably also part of this decision. If there were to be a lawsuit, they will have a better case given that everyone could have gotten 3 month use out of whatever they had paid for.
-
From what I know of office/business server admin, I believe there has to be at least two servers per "server" for load sharing and redundancy. To be able to replicate 15 game servers plus a "beta" server in that scenario is going to be problematic. At best, there will have to be some process by which we can, say, vote for one or two (given what I've seen in-game this summer and what little I can find on actual estimates of subscription numbers, two would be preferable) game servers to survive, and we have to pick which characters get to "live." (I know I have a serious case of "alt-itis," but I also have about a dozen server transfers saved up.)
If the physical servers can be obtained, even temporarily, then that buys more time for a proper migration. My feeling would be that a decent, relatively recent dual core server with sufficient RAM (with servers, that means at least 32GB ECC, not cheap), decent storage (probably only a couple of TB, but server drives run 3 to 4 times faster than your desktop) and running CentOS should handle the load on an average day, but that's a guess with no experience in game servers, just in raw hardware. This kind of equipment can be had at 10% of it's new cost, if you know where to look, or for more on eBay.
Physically, the infrastructure is eminently doable, but I know enough to know that I only know about 50% of what would be necessary to get this up and running, just from an IT standpoint. I actually fully expect someone to point out that I should reduce that percentage before the weekend is out, but I'd be more than willing to at least try to get to wherever to be an extra pair of hands when the time comes.
EDIT: Also a good NAS could potentially handle all the "world" data, with the server just pulling what it needs. Again, just a guess, but a NAS is always a good idea.
-
If this can be pulled off, I wouldn't count on any current account info. surviving.
I'd be thrilled if I can just start over on one server. Yeah, that would stink to go down to one server, but it would far preferable to what we will have on 12/1, and it would help grouping for all of us to be that one server. I can't imagine there being more than one on any new venture. But, tons of things to consider before getting to that point.
-
From what we know so far, each "server" consists of a dbserver and one or more mapservers. The dbserver stores character data and brokers connections to the mapservers that serve each zone. Mapservers are also allocated on the fly to serve instanced missions.
The devs called them shards, and that's probably what I'll adopt when talking about them, because they don't necessarily have any relationship to physical servers. Two shards could share the same hardware if they are both low population, for instance. Because of the map server design, it's quite posssible to have a pool of mapservers that gets allocated to each shard as needed.
There's also the auth server that handles logins, the global chat server, the auction server, etc. etc. The global services maintain an open connection to the dbservers and mapservers.
Because of this design, depending on load, you could probably run ALL of the dbservers on a single machine, and run as many mapserver instances as you can on one or more others.
Also don't forget that servers can always be virtual. Even if it looks like a separate server, it could just be a VM instance that gets migrated to one of a number of phyiscal machines, as needed to balance out the load.
-
Hi TonyV,
I was thinking along the exact same lines when I was directed to your post. Though I am not a developer of CoH, I have extensive programming experience and infinite love for this game. If you ever do manage to get the rights/code/servers, and if you need help with development and/or game design, please drop me a line, and I'd be happy to help in a big way.
I can be reached at the e-mail: stronae at speakeasy dot net. (If you contact me through this, I'll happily share my CV.)
Thanks!
As much as I dislike their politics, I have to say that host wise GoDaddy has been the best I've worked with. The Big thing we want to get is that the host supports the vBulletin forum system.
-
Not to drag this into a nuts and bolts discussion, but virtualization does open possibilities, budget-wise, that I admit I hadn't considered, but I think you'd still want redundancy. That potentially takes it down to two machines, at most four. I had forgotten that the company I worked for had just virtualized their two network controllers shortly before I left. They had two machines that were each carrying half of their clients' servers, and they had probably a dozen on each when I left. That was servers running Windows Server 03 or 08 for an office, though. (In one case, OS X Server. We won't go there. <shudder>)
And, yes, Jetpack, I meant to say that the best that we could hope for is that something can be done before the lights go out. I guess I didn't state that implicitly. I'm going through a little at a time and grabbing screenshots of my favorite characters in some of my favorite places. My Iron Man clone in the donut in Overbrook/Faultline, for instance...
-
I had a discussion with some people on HUB on Triumph, and we figured out that a buyout of CoH could actually come in 3 forms:
1. Complete IP and game buyout, of course, is the best option, where we own the game and all its IP.
2. Operating License - We retain the rights to operate City of Heroes and pay a percentage to NCSoft, where they avoid the operating costs buy still make some money. They retain the IP rights, however, and can revoke our license at any time.
3. Limited Operating License - We retain the rights to operate City of Heroes AS IS, but only for a fixed period of time, after which we have to remove all reference to NCSoft IP and possibly change the name of the game. As long as we comply with the agreement, we pretty much own the game.
All three would keep CoH running for now, though #2 is the riskiest.
-
FWIW, I'm 95% sure that the NCsoft-run server software is Windows-based. If we end up having to write our own, it will be able to be run on Linux and not require quite as much of the machine's resources devoted to just running the OS.
-
Replying to the two above posts, option 2 seems like what NCSoft did when Cryptic left, getting them here, supposedly, so it may be that Perfect World ends up getting the money in a kind of hybrid of 2 and 3.
Running in CentOS or the like would be less resource intensive, but more problematic to migrate to from a Windows environment. In that scenario, we're better off in the long term just shifting to a "let's make up our own and call it Village of Vigilantes" sort of scenario.
8)
-
Thanks for all your hard work Tony and everybody involved. I'll be helping spread the word, finance or anything else I can do to help. Something is better than nothing. Keep fighting the good fight!
-
FWIW, I'm 95% sure that the NCsoft-run server software is Windows-based. If we end up having to write our own, it will be able to be run on Linux and not require quite as much of the machine's resources devoted to just running the OS.
As I have interviewed for a programming position for CoH before I know as fact that it runs on Windows in C.
-
I don't have much to offer, but I was the Drama Editor for my High schools Magazine, and I still love to write and edit. If you need a writer please put me on your list. If we do a Kickstarter I'd also donate money to that as much as I can. I'd also pay a monthly subscription fee to be playing COH: Forever.
-
The RE project will definitely need writers at some point, but it will be some time before we get that far. So unfortunately I don't have anything else to offer to do there yet. However if you want to get involved in the "Save CoH" projects, I'm sure that good writers would be more than welcome to help spread word of what's going on and appeal both to the people who can affect that decision, and also the media outlets who cover it.
-
As I have interviewed for a programming position for CoH before I know as fact that it runs on Windows in C.
That is unfortunate. Is it C proper? C# or C++? If it's C, or C++ we might be able to recompile for CentOS. However, if it's C#, we're definitely stuck with windows machines.
Also for server architecture, having a cluster of virtual map servers, might be pretty good. We should probably still get physical DB server's, just because of the Memory caps on virtual machines at most hosts. If we try to do our own physical servers with a private cloud we're probably looking at major monthly server costs. I have a Rackspace quote for roughly 14k a month for a similar configuration with RedHat.
We could also, do physical servers and use an F5 Load balancer to offload extra load to a public cloud system. Maybe that means spooling up extra map servers as load increases.
-
I applied a few years back, as well. The programming test they sent was straight up, old school C. Actually tripped me up a bit, I hadn't worked with old-style C-strings for a while at that point, and had to get my mind back into that mode. It was funny, 6 months later I would've had no problem whatsoever, heh. Anyway, yeah, definitely C.
-
It's not C#. When it was first written C# was barely a blip on the radar.
From my, ahem, work with the client I can tell you that it's primarily C with a little C++ mixed in (mostly in third party libraries). I'd guess about 30% of the code is shared between client and server, possibly a little more.
My comment about running on Linux was more in context of the RE project. Although, if we somehow ended up in possession of the official server code, it would probably run just peachy in WINE.
-
Anything you need me to do I am game.. Lets not give up without a fight! Good luck Tony!
-
Thats good news! I was thinking it would work under WINE as well, but not sure how stable that would be for a server. I've only played with WINE to play games under OSX and Ubuntu. Not sure how much resources WINE would suck up?
-
Not much, actually, as a server uses much less of the Win32 API than a game client with graphics code does, so it would actually be pretty darn stable. A server process spends most of its execution time running custom code loops, which WINE doesn't do anything with -- it just executes it directly. WINE only steps in when it tries to access the Windows-specific functions.
Which, for a server, will very likely be limited to file and network I/O, and the timer APIs.
-
My comment about running on Linux was more in context of the RE project. Although, if we somehow ended up in possession of the official server code, it would probably run just peachy in WINE.
I am not a programmer, so forgive me if this is an irrelevant point to bring up, but you may be aware that COH was "ported" (more or less successfully) to the Mac. Maybe that would be helpful in the context of WINE. TheManga was pretty much the main player helping to troubleshoot the Mac client and would have a lot more insights.
And yes, in a perfect world I'd love to see the Mac client survive, but I don't expect it to happen.
-
IIRC the Mac port used Cider, which is more or less a Mac version of WINE.
I've also successfully run the CoH client on WINE on Linux and even FreeBSD before, and despite some graphics issues it was functional.
-
I am not a programmer, so forgive me if this is an irrelevant point to bring up, but you may be aware that COH was "ported" (more or less successfully) to the Mac. Maybe that would be helpful in the context of WINE. TheManga was pretty much the main player helping to troubleshoot the Mac client and would have a lot more insights.
WINE is not really designed for running Windows-based server applications on Linux. A better bet for that would be VirtualBox or VMWare for Linux. Both have server-class products for running virtualized servers on a Linux base.
And yes, in a perfect world I'd love to see the Mac client survive, but I don't expect it to happen.
I will personally do what I can to make sure it does. :)
Also, I have a detailed plan worked out for any possible transition in a purchase/licensing scenario, but I'm not going to cover that yet because it would be premature to discuss it until we at least get a "yes" or "maybe" out of NCSoft. IF we do, be sure that I will happily post the detailed plan in its entirety.
-
I will personally do what I can to make sure it does. :)
Also, I have a detailed plan worked out for any possible transition in a purchase/licensing scenario, but I'm not going to cover that yet because it would be premature to discuss it until we at least get a "yes" or "maybe" out of NCSoft. IF we do, be sure that I will happily post the detailed plan in its entirety.
Well, you just made my heart happily skip a beat... :D
Thanks for having it on your radar...but yes, the big question comes first.
-
Hey, stop distracting our reverse engineer, we need him reverse engineering! :P
...I keed, I keed. I'm excited that I'm finding out we know a lot more than I thought we knew.
-
o.o about the servers.. are you absolutely sure they didn't shrink them down a lot for CoH:Freedom? I was under the impression part of it was suppose to be new server code letting them instance multiple 'servers' on the old hardware so they could bunch the euro servers up with the US ones.. a little birdie told me that some of the old CoH server stuff was moved over to be used with GW2, most specifically the auction server and global chat server...
-
I'm really sorry that I opened this can, but, since we're there, anyway, this was an entertaining read:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2663243#2663243
I especially like the pic of what I can only guess they are calling the Bay o' Wolves.
-
I don't want to take the wind out of the movement's sails, but a former dev, Graham West, confirmed here: http://city-of-heroes.livejournal.com/3561849.html?thread=44812665#t44812665 (http://city-of-heroes.livejournal.com/3561849.html?thread=44812665#t44812665) -- that NCsoft paid Cryptic $10mil for 50% of the license for the IP and the engine, indefinitely. Ten million dollars is more than a little out of reach, even for crowdsourcing. I don't think that'll be a viable avenue, sadly.
-
This was the cost then, now is another time, and also, we could settle for a definite time license, to offer a proper retirement for the game instead of how it's going to be "put down".
We can also just pay a license to exploit the game for them, giving them all the money we can make, in order to appeal more.
-
All depends on how the suits view it, I suppose.
The effective value of the engine is $0, after all, sitting on a shelf collecting dust, and it's fairly dated to begin with. Any future value of the IP drops with each passing day... nostalgia only gets you so far.
And this method of closing it down, while not the worst I've ever seen in the MMO world, isn't exactly going to put a high-gloss shine on NCSoft's reputation. They could gain a lot of goodwill along with a bottom-line bump by agreeing to more of a "salvage" price. (Note: I have no doubt any number will still be 7 figures... they have no real reason to bother with less.)
As has been said various times, first step is to see if they'll even bother talking...
-
If you can get this off the ground I am willing to work as a mission architect and the like, if need be. I am in full support of your movement and have been following along as this has unfolded. If you need anything, I will do my best to assist. I will chime in if I feel I can offer any advice worth while.
-
Some one on the official forum, in Tony's thread about coordinating efforts, no less, mentioned hitting magazine site tip pages. Places like Massively, IGN, and the like. This might also be an opportunity for one of those folks who have writing skills to do some freelance journalism to get some quotes from Tony and others and put something together. I haven't done something like that in years, but it seems like an experienced researcher could have a story in the inboxes of the submission editors of Game Informer, Wired, EGM, etc. by the time they come in for work in the morning, right?
-
I agree with everything you are doing. I have not read all the posts but, I would like to give you a couple of things to ponder. Given the time frame, I think you should have a two sided plan. Part One would incorporate all efforts to gain info/monies/man power and purchase CoH by the Titan Team. The second which would need to be implemented at the same time would be to have a team contact someone that holds this type of game / creativity close to their heart. Someone that has contacts in the field and someone that might be able to find the investors to save CoH. I am thinking that one person that fits this model is Stan Lee. Although he has had his ties with Marvel, I believe he might be able to look past Marvel to see the possibilities of owning CoH and I am sure his heart would be in it. Your thoughts ??? Either way, we need to gain as much info from the Paragon Devs to help us.
I have been able to find some minimal contact info for Stan Lee:
Stan Lee c/o POW! Entertainment, Inc.
9440 Santa Monica Blvd.
Suite 620
Beverly Hills, Ca. 90210-4608
I am told he is using twitter but , that is probably a PR person that sends msgs. for the client.
Please post any info you might have and I will take the time and spend the $$$$ to make the contact. Thanks in advance for any help.
-
This was the cost then, now is another time, and also, we could settle for a definite time license, to offer a proper retirement for the game instead of how it's going to be "put down".
From an accounting perspective, however, it was put on the books for $10m, so it's a $10m tax write-off if they just drop it from their assets. At least in the US, tax law in Korea may be different.
They might agree to sell it for less if they're desperate for cash.
-
From an accounting perspective, however, it was put on the books for $10m, so it's a $10m tax write-off if they just drop it from their assets. At least in the US, tax law in Korea may be different.
They might agree to sell it for less if they're desperate for cash.
And if they sell it, it's only worth the price.
I still can't believe they pay 10m taxes though. Depends on which subsidiary/mother holds this precise license. They can't play ball like that for any amount.
-
Heyo everybody I know somebody already mentioned it but S.E.G.S is definitely still alive and making progress, I've been talking to the guys down there and they are working on movement and map server stuff and making progress, what they really need is more coders seems they only have a few if they got a boost in coders they could get alot done faster.
So if you think about it they already have a strong start they just need the backup and it wouldn't take anywhere near as much effort than starting from scratch.
Head to their forum and let them know if you want to help, or head to their IRC I'll post links to both!
Forum: http://segs.nemerle.eu/forumz/index.php
IRC: http://segs.nemerle.eu/forumz/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&p=955&hilit=IRC#p955
Please help these guys out, they are definitely our future in COX!
-
The "Angel" is an idea, though I highly doubt anyone from DC would want to be seen as disloyal to their brand, namely DCUO. I can't think of anyone with the kind of name recognition The Man carries, but Marvel may have a sour view of this brand as well. It all depends on how they would want to look in this. It may be better for them to stay out of it altogether.
Pie-in-the-sky, they buy it, but it's more of a DC-style world, what with the city that doesn't really exist and all. Marvel Studios has a lot of creative freedom under Disney, so far, though.
One other person who might have contacts would be Abraham Benrubi. He used to play, according to things he said back during the first few issues, but I have no idea if he still does.
-
That is unfortunate. Is it C proper? C# or C++? If it's C, or C++ we might be able to recompile for CentOS. However, if it's C#, we're definitely stuck with windows machines.
As DamianoV said it is old school C which I prefer over C++ or C#. I have been programming for a long time.
-
I don't want to take the wind out of the movement's sails, but a former dev, Graham West, confirmed here: http://city-of-heroes.livejournal.com/3561849.html?thread=44812665#t44812665 (http://city-of-heroes.livejournal.com/3561849.html?thread=44812665#t44812665) -- that NCsoft paid Cryptic $10mil for 50% of the license for the IP and the engine, indefinitely. Ten million dollars is more than a little out of reach, even for crowdsourcing. I don't think that'll be a viable avenue, sadly.
City of Heroes was at the peak if its success back then, and could demand a huge price. While it's profitable and a steady performer right now, it's not worth nearly as much.
-
I agree with everything you are doing. I have not read all the posts but, I would like to give you a couple of things to ponder. Given the time frame, I think you should have a two sided plan. Part One would incorporate all efforts to gain info/monies/man power and purchase CoH by the Titan Team. The second which would need to be implemented at the same time would be to have a team contact someone that holds this type of game / creativity close to their heart. Someone that has contacts in the field and someone that might be able to find the investors to save CoH. I am thinking that one person that fits this model is Stan Lee. Although he has had his ties with Marvel, I believe he might be able to look past Marvel to see the possibilities of owning CoH and I am sure his heart would be in it. Your thoughts ??? Either way, we need to gain as much info from the Paragon Devs to help us.
This is an interesting idea - not monetary, legal or programming firepower, but name recognition firepower. That's the sort of thing that gets you noticed by industry trade publications and the gaming community (that comments on 8,000 other boards we've never heard of). Stan the Man is an obvious choice. To that, I'd like to throw in well-known comics nerds like Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon. If you guys get a viable gameplan together, and just need it pushed, approaching this sort of audience with it would snowball the effort, and those two in particular have a history of listening to "guy on the street" voices. At the end of the day, Vak is a vigilante - it's all well and good to play the hero, but if we can get mileage out of shaming the archvillain into buckling, the objective is still met.
In the same vein, what other famous/infamous people do y'all know who've mentioned this game before?
On other notes - not a programmer; but if/when we get to the point of monetary contributions I will do what I can. I have been an active subscriber to the game for 97 months (oddly, I never moved off month-to-month) and have bought extra Paragon Points whenever a nifty item was up for sale. For around a year I had two active accounts going. I have dropped around $2K on NCSoft. It would pinch but I would exceed that in one check if it could help to keep this dream alive. When I think of the dreams, friends and history, the expense is worth it.
-
This is an interesting idea - not monetary, legal or programming firepower, but name recognition firepower. That's the sort of thing that gets you noticed by industry trade publications and the gaming community (that comments on 8,000 other boards we've never heard of). Stan the Man is an obvious choice. To that, I'd like to throw in well-known comics nerds like Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon. If you guys get a viable gameplan together, and just need it pushed, approaching this sort of audience with it would snowball the effort, and those two in particular have a history of listening to "guy on the street" voices. At the end of the day, Vak is a vigilante - it's all well and good to play the hero, but if we can get mileage out of shaming the archvillain into buckling, the objective is still met.
In the same vein, what other famous/infamous people do y'all know who've mentioned this game before?
On other notes - not a programmer; but if/when we get to the point of monetary contributions I will do what I can. I have been an active subscriber to the game for 97 months (oddly, I never moved off month-to-month) and have bought extra Paragon Points whenever a nifty item was up for sale. For around a year I had two active accounts going. I have dropped around $2K on NCSoft. It would pinch but I would exceed that in one check if it could help to keep this dream alive. When I think of the dreams, friends and history, the expense is worth it.
Has anyone thought a bout contacting the guys behind Penny Arcade? They love stuff like this and might even give a shout out to help save CoH at their gaming convention, PAX, and on their website.
-
In this sort of a time sensitive situation, I say when you think of someone to contact just do that yourself first then tell us you did. It's not really possible to make it worse. I would love to see the game saved but I suggest someone from Titan get in touch directly with the S.E.G.S. guys to see if there's any sort of data collection or anything us regular non coding types can do for them. Give me a tool to collect data and I'll run around the city gathering info until I drop dead at my keyboard if I have to.
-
I'm exchanging emails with Nemerle at this moment, trying to figure out the best way we can coordinate our efforts. :)
The goals are a bit different, as the RE project is aiming to reproduce the Issue 24 server, but I think there is definitely the possibility of collaboration.
Also, don't worry too much about time. Obviously, sooner is better, but at this point we know enough about the client that a server could be written, even if the NCsoft servers shut down today.
-
I can't believe that this is even happening. I get back from a small break, and it's the worst news ever!
But if you need a 3D artist, I've had classes for it for a total of 5 years, I know Autodesk Maya pretty well, and have taken classes on Video Game Asset Design. If you need me to learn other programs, that's fine, just let me know so that I can get a headstart on it. I've also been taking illustration classes, and while I'm not great at it, I'll volunteer some work to keep such an amazing game alive!
-
Hi Guys
As Codewalker said, I certainly see possibility of combining our efforts
The extent of our collaboration depends very much on the actual outcome of the other, less developer-time intensive CoX saving approaches.
-
I'd like to help in any way possible.
Should we be running packet sniffers or any other tools to gather info?
-
We probably have enough for the basics at this point.
However, if you can run a packet sniffer like Wireshark or tcpdump and are doing anything off the beaten patch, that could potentially be useful. Things like running Incarnate trials, using the LFG tool to start a Task Force, Ouroboros arcs, missions with cutscenes, claiming items from email / character rewards, base editing, all that stuff that you only do once in a blue moon...
I'm putting together a tool that will process the captures and decrypt the data for analysis. Just save the file in pcap format and it will be able to read it once it's ready.
-
Just want to say we're with you as well. CoH was the first MMO that my wife cut her teeth on and I have many MANY fond memories of it as well. For things to have been handled as they have is just reprehensible. The candle may be flickering but the flame hasn't died yet!
-
Well i have seen the posts about the money to buy the game outright.. hmmm seems a little out of the range, the best opinon would be to approach to rent the licence as NCSoft will make money for nothing. From a business point of view that makes more sense and would be more viable as probably the cash up front would be minimal. There is also the cost of sub licensing from cryptic as they still own some of the rights. Again an approach would be necessary, but again from a business point of view they would probably be open to suggestions as with the game dead they would earn nothing along with NCSoft.
From what I see there are plenty of people that are willing to continue to pay subscriptions for the game which would i am sure be enough to meet the license agreements that the 2 studios want.
However there is a 3rd option which would be to try and by the game outright.. $10million is a figure i have seen thrown around, with the right business plan even in the climate of today's financial situation there would be i am sure willing backers of the scheme. Although it would need firm figures and an accurate direction of where the game is going to go under private ( Titan ) ownership. of course if the correct backer could be found to maybe plunge a little cash into the venture then i am sure it could succeed. Seeing as COH is allegedly having a better time of it than Champions and DC universe. this would require a firm plan on where the game is going to go and if it would be widely available to all.
Of course they may need to be a streamlining of the servers to reduce costs and maybe development delayed whilst this is all sorted out, but worded correctly in a business plan ( As long as NCSoft are willing to let go ) would surely find a bank or backer with no major issues. After all online gaming is starting to catch up with retail sales of consoles.
Of course this is dependent of a firm leadership in the form of Titan who are already known worldwide ( Not trying to blow your trumpet, but you are ) with a positive and firm action plan on where you want to take the game in the future.
-
However, if you can run a packet sniffer like Wireshark or tcpdump...
Since I've never used a packet sniffer before....
I am more than happy to do this. Frankly, the wind went out of my sails when I saw that NCSoft had ditched CoH, and I didn't feel like playing. However, if my playing can help get an emulator and/or future development off the ground, I am eager to play as much as I can.
The things I need to know are:
- Do I need to keep a written log of what I am doing and send it along with the packet captures?
- To where do I send the packet captures?
I will get Wireshark installed tonight or tomorrow.
Many, many thanks for your efforts.
By the way, I do not have experience in game programming. My experience is in database application programming and database-driven websites. PM me if you think that might be useful and you want details.
-
1. Just a general overview if you do anything is fine. Something like "Numina TF" or "Base editing session".
2. Nowhere, yet. A blind capture will get all sorts of stuff you may not want anyone else to see. I'm working on a utility to filter it, or you could also apply a wireshark capture filter of "ip.addr >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.addr < 64.25.48.0". Keep your eyes on this spot for what to do with the capture files once we're ready.
-
I take it that IP range is the current servers?
-
Hi guys, Mercedes Lackey here. I did some serious networking at DragonCon...I was literally JUST checked into the con hotel when I was smashed in the face with the news. I've hooked the one person in my personal circle of acquaintances who may have a glimmer of pulling any kind of save off with the City Of team and pointed him here.
I'm not going to blow sunshine up anyone's derriere, and I haven't got leave to reveal who I've tapped--and don't let this derail any efforts at coming up with an alternate PLEASE!--but just know we've got people who will do their damndest to save Paragon again.
-
Hi guys, Mercedes Lackey here. I did some serious networking at DragonCon...I was literally JUST checked into the con hotel when I was smashed in the face with the news. I've hooked the one person in my personal circle of acquaintances who may have a glimmer of pulling any kind of save off with the City Of team and pointed him here.
I'm not going to blow sunshine up anyone's derriere, and I haven't got leave to reveal who I've tapped--and don't let this derail any efforts at coming up with an alternate PLEASE!--but just know we've got people who will do their damndest to save Paragon again.
And we all appreciate the effort! :)
-
Count me among the packet sniffers. I had planned on hanging up my cape until I found out more, but as has been said I'll do whatever I can to gather information for this effort to save the game.
-
I'd also be happy to assist with sniffing, okay so that sounds bad, you get the idea. Also still spreading the word regarding Titan's attempts, the petitions, finding folks willing to donate money should we attain that level. Again if anything does come to fruition I'd be happy to help with writing, database work and those sort of tasks as heavy coding is beyond my level currently. At any rate I love the drive of everybody here and I am proud of you all.
-
Just a note to pledge my support: money (what little I have), time, UNIX/Linux admin skills.
-
Just wanted to say it is truly a sight to see our community coming together as it is so far. I'm so use to reading threads that ALWAYS turns into some flame war between posters. It really is a heroic thing for us all to come together for the same cause and to fight for something that is so important to so many. I don't have the skill as most of the posters in here but I will donate my sub fee of upto about $20-$25 each month and I can also donte a little extra to any Kickstart fund.
Reading through all 14 pages makes me proud to be apart of such a great community. Now lets save this game !!!
-
Hi there
Im glad to see people are willing to help, and so am I.
Sadly, I have no experience in design etc, and, like many people have little financially to donate.
I am however happy to contribute the equivalent of what I would have expected to pay in the way of subscriptions up to the close date into a fund should it be needed - not much, but it was already budjeted!
I hope and believe you guys can pull this off!
-
Good luck to us all.
I downloaded Wireshark 1.8.2 (first time I've used one of these) and captured some interactions with the server, including collecting a few items from the auction house, cancelling and placing new bids, starting and aborting a Ouro flashback, and running one ITF.
It may have been my newbieness, or maybe filtering works differently in different Wireshark versions - anyway, I ran into a few minor problems. Here's what I did to resolve them:
1) It wasn't obvious how to apply a Capture Filter, and Help was less than helpful. I thought that the "capture filters" button in the toolbar would do the job but it had no effect besides allowing me to create a new filter - all the traffic to unrelated ip addresses still showed up.
Solution: double-click on the name of the capture interface in the list below "Start" or in the list of interfaces which appears after you click on "Capture Options". There is a place to enter a capture filter string, however...[see problem #3]
2) Due to my initial failure above, I then tried a display filter. This at least worked intuitively. I created and saved the filter, which made a nice clickable toolbar button, and could apply it and clear it. However, it wasn't completely filtering out the traffic to unrelated ip addresses.
Solution: I used the display filter "(ip.src >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.src < 64.25.48.0) or (ip.dst >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.dst < 64.25.48.0)" instead.
3) Since the display filter was hiding instead of actually eliminating the unrelated traffic, I went back to working on problem #1, at which point I found its solution, but encountered another problem. When I tried the suggested string "ip.addr >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.addr < 64.25.48.0", it complained about an invalid capture filter syntax; my display filter string also failed to work. After a bit of searching, I found that capture filters and display filters work differently, and I made a new capture filter string "net 64.25.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0" which seemed to work. Maybe someone who knows Wireshark better than me can point where I went wrong at first, or make an even better capture string.
Hope this helps other Wireshark newbies.
-
Ah, if that's what it wants then "net 64.25.32.0 mask 255.255.240.0" should do the trick and cut down the IP range to just the NCSoft block.
-
I've come to add my support wherever I can add it. I'm the current leader of the Artful Dodgers on Virtue and we were talking about starting up a new guildsite which meant that I was setting aside money to set up a website. I've got some people within the guild that we might be able to tap for various skills. Personally I've got a Bachelors in English, and happen to be a pretty competent writer.
Though I suppose you're probably up to your neck in writers at the moment, so I'll just chill out and continue to set aside money for whatever.
Beyond that I've got some web developers and artists that I might be able to get on board. If you have need for any of those, also one of my friends has been modding the game for a while I'm sure that he might have some insight into the coding of the game and stuff.
-
question - do we currently have a "war chest"? if so I'd be willing to contribute if needed.
-
I am not a highly skilled programmer nor a 3D artist but I have some good experience working with MySQL/MSSQL/PostgreSQL, I've also ran a UO shard based on RunUO and made a lot of fairly complex scripts and some C#, C++ programming.
I do work within IT field administrating systems and dedicated servers, mostly FreeBSD and RHEL.
While I do know my experience is far from what's needed for an actual working project in short terms I can dedicate some of my time to it and help as much as I can as soon as we have some coordination and actual goals.
Also if cash is needed I would gladly donate my CoX yearly subscription.
-
question - do we currently have a "war chest"? if so I'd be willing to contribute if needed.
We are currently in the process of finding out what options are actually available to us. Once we've figured out that part, we'll need to decide which available option to pursue. At that point, depending on the decision, we may need to start building the war chest.
-
We are currently in the process of finding out what options are actually available to us. Once we've figured out that part, we'll need to decide which available option to pursue. At that point, depending on the decision, we may need to start building the war chest.
You may want to gradually put up a FAQ about these kinds of questions. Just a big, red "F.A.Q.", even if it's not really Frequently Asked Questions, could inform a lot of people really well and fast.
This would be the answer to "I want to give financial support to saving City of Heroes, what do I do ?'
-
Well I'll continue to monitor the thread and repost the link to here when I can. 8)
-
Sadly unemployed and hunting jobs right now, so I can't contribute much. But I'm cheering you all on, regardless!
-
Offering my services in any way possible to any efforts needed. I am a professional videographer and aspiring screenwriter with experience in writing for fiction and non-fiction. If anything pulls through and writing efforts or story design is needed I'd gladly lend a hand.
For some samples of my efforts in writing for CoH my Arcs (with cutscenes!) are provided below:
Arc ID 529478 - "A Long Time Ago In A Zone Far, Far Away"
Arc ID 530481 - "The Seventh Project"
I also worked in NYC doing website copy and newsletter copy along with video shorts and photography. Always willing to lend a hand to the city I've lived in for 8+ years.
Go. Hunt. Save CoH.
Evangel | Infinity Server
-
Though I suppose you're probably up to your neck in writers at the moment, so I'll just chill out and continue to set aside money for whatever.
o,o you'd be surprised, but no worries, we're keeping track of what ppl can help with. we're still in the early days though, so pls check back every couple days or so =^^=
-
Can I use your "cutscenes" videos in an appeal to signatures for the petitions ?
Offering my services in any way possible to any efforts needed. I am a professional videographer and aspiring screenwriter with experience in writing for fiction and non-fiction. If anything pulls through and writing efforts or story design is needed I'd gladly lend a hand.
For some samples of my efforts in writing for CoH my Arcs (with cutscenes!) are provided below:
Arc ID 529478 - "A Long Time Ago In A Zone Far, Far Away"
Arc ID 530481 - "The Seventh Project"
I also worked in NYC doing website copy and newsletter copy along with video shorts and photography. Always willing to lend a hand to the city I've lived in for 8+ years.
Go. Hunt. Save CoH.
Evangel | Infinity Server
-
Can I use your "cutscenes" videos in an appeal to signatures for the petitions ?
Have at it - actually just made them all public for ease of access on Youtube. The channel is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/warehouseloadingbay/videos
Back in the day I was a winner for one of the video contests and want to upload the video to Youtube, so will add it to that channel as well to show how the devs were always so supportive of user-content.
Go. Hunt. Save CoH.
Evangel | Infinity Server
-
I'm putting together a tool that will process the captures and decrypt the data for analysis. Just save the file in pcap format and it will be able to read it once it's ready.
So the encryption is known for the current version, then? That's good to hear. Is this documented anywhere? It's tough to find anything useful from efforts to RE the game.
I was going to be making as many caps as I can in the coming weeks for various actions, just in the hope that at some point they might be useful (to myself or others), but it sounds like that might be sooner than I thought.
-
Have at it - actually just made them all public for ease of access on Youtube. The channel is hear:
http://www.youtube.com/user/warehouseloadingbay/videos
Thanks a megaton Evangel !
-
Is this documented anywhere? It's tough to find anything useful from efforts to RE the game.
Bits and pieces all over the place. Part of the effort is to get them all organized and coordinated...
-
Hi all, Joshex here.
if we do need to resort to running the game ourselves, I am a 3D modeller, animator and game designer, i will be more than happy to work on this project.
-
Ok, when I'm using Wireshark...do I want the pcap-ng format? Or do I uncheck that box?
-
Use the regular pcap format, it'll be the one below pcap-ng. It should show as Wireshark/tcpdump/something else I forget.
If you accidentally picked the wrong one, it's not a big deal, you can always re-open the capture file and save it in pcap format.
-
<.< Just a side note since this seems to be where most ppl are posting offers...
If Your Offering your skills to help:
*Please give a basic list of them so we know where to categorize you
ex: programers should mention what languages they are familiar with
ex:artists might list medium or programs they are used to using/have access to
*Contact info isn't necessary, we'll keep it if given, but without it the Titan forums Messaging will be used
<.< anyone can see whats written in this part, so use discretion!
*All help is appreciated, just because your skill set doesn't seem to fit exactly doesn't mean we might not need it!
o.o you wouldn't think we'd need a secretary, but someone has to do data entry and keep track of these things..
*Seriously, any help, monetary, time, or just a 'go get em!' is great! Just being here to give your two cents means something to us!!
>.> rumor has it that the admin we keep locked up in the Mid's section eats bad dreams.. I call him Baku
If you don't hear from someone at the Network right away, its the work load, we are keeping track of these things and seriously considering offers and where we can most use the help. Some things will just take awhile to get to.. Several specific sections have also been started in Save Paragon City! (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/board,134.0.html) section for immediate things.
=^_^= as always, thanks for being here! The Titan Network Admin and Admin of the individual websites that make it up, really appreciate the support and would be posting like mad here, but there's just so much to do.. please bear with us as we zoom ahead into the unknown!
-
Hi, I joined because of the recent sad events.
I can offer time to QL test stuff, lots of time. Or proof read etc. Donkey work basically.
Just a heads up.
TOP SHOW Titan Network for doing what you are doing.
-
Listing skills:
1. Currently a system admin for State Farm Insurance with skill in building/maintaining servers
2. Location - Michigan
-
Skills list:
Data-Entry skills: Rated to 9050kph at 100% accuracy (approx. 45-50wpm)
Some on-air radio experience(1 year spent volunteering at a local community radio station while I lived in New Zealand for 2 years.
============
Hope it helps.... :)
-
For Sleepykitty:
-Programming and hackery (Java/C++/C#/LOLCODE)
-Hobbyist gamedev and 3d modelling (Blender)
-Writing
-Typing at 100+ wpm
-Being feline
=^p^=
-
Every bit helps.
o.o heck, look at me, I've been doing historical research for the last few years and I'm here spending 5+ hrs a day combing forms and compiling names for projects. You just never know what someone will suddenly need.. >.> curious about the MIT request myself...
<.< anyway, added you blitz, and updated RK's listing, thanks!
-
List of Skills:
English proficiency - Was an English teacher in china for a year. I have been praised by game devs in the past for my creative writing skills as well.
Game engine and scripting knowledge - sufficient for anything modern games have thrown at me as challenges.
Rigging Knowledge, (making characters movable) - severely extensive knowledge in this field, not only characters but objects, weapons, environments, effects ETC.
Texture mapping - up to date in the trade with a few tricks of my own. can do wonderful normal maps.
Animation - can do, I prefer to do very energetic motions so superheroes/villains are a perfect application of my skills.
Physics knowledge - moderate to high applying them to scripts is just a matter of math.
and finally
3D Modeling - I am a veteran of 8 years in this area, I won multiple speed modeling contests, my models are always clean and precise, I can work very low poly and make it look and act perfectly. I started by modeling monsters and objects I am very proficient in this area, I quickly took up character design and with-in 6 years got to a point where I can model anything I'm told to or desire to.
I also use blender like ROBOKitty
-
My skills:
- Historical research funnily enough, and all the skills that teaches. I'm currently in college as History and Archaeology major. That's lots of data entry and paper writing.
- I'm also pretty good at writing, and would happily lend those skills to future development needs if it comes to that.
- I actually took some intro level programming courses and web design courses. Mostly that was in Java, but some C++. I know enough about code that if you gave me a sample and said: "This is what a powerset looks like, go code all the Scrapper primaries." I could do that no problem. Making things from scratch I'd have more difficulty with.
- I'm also perfectly willing to offer my time as a "secretary" of sorts, keeping track of what's going on and making sure stuff gets to whoever is supposed to be seeing it etc. As I said I'm a college student. I spend a large percentage of my time on the internet. :P
Unrelated funny story about the history research thing...I think that may be what inspired my current project now that you mention it. While I'm going around packet sniffing, I am completing all of my favorite story arcs for my character and compiling a sort of biography of his superhero career by captioning screenshots in a word processor. I wasn't sure why the idea came to me until you brought that up. It's actually pretty fun by the way, and I highly suggest everyone consider it. It will be a nice keepsake, even if we do save the game. After all, you can always add more to the story :)
-
Has anyone heard if Jack Emmert is interested in picking up /continuing the IP? I would not be at all upset to see Cryptic give it another run with COH2: Resurrection. Provided they got away from the campy CO look, of course. They have already proved their game engine is very adaptable, so the game could be on the shelves in relatively short order.
I have to admit, bringing back Statesman and Paragon City from the ashes would be a great reboot for the IP in general.
-
I would also like to help save my favorite city. Here is what I can offer:
I am an accounting major, so I can help with anything on that front. I also have a knack for collecting, organizing, analyzing and reporting data.
I also have a background in graphic design. I am proficient in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. I have experience, but am probably a bit rusty, with Flash, Premier, and Dreamweaver.
While not a marketing person myself, I have been sitting in on marketing meetings for about five years now and have picked up a few things, so I might be able to make a good assistant.
I will do anything I can to help.
-Ryan
-
Not gonna lie, totally forgot that I had this account. I don't even know if I've ever posted using it. That said, I want you all to know that no matter the outcome here, you have my sword. And my cash, for that matter, which I imagine to be somewhat more useful when it comes time to inspire people to work.
...
Admittedly, though, the sword actually works rather well for that too...
...
Okay, got sidetracked there, I suppose I should list my skills that I can offer. Admittedly, they aren't plentiful, but if this is a "take what we can get" enterprise, I will happily offer my services.
- Can spot a typo at a range of 10 goats with glasses on. Otherwise, the typo is kinda blurry. More precisely, I can proofread rather well.
- Has spent considerable time writing, and wouldn't mind breaking out the pen and paper to have another go at it.
- Sorta-okay at drawing. You'd be better served with a better artist than me, but if the chips are down, I will put my nose to the damned grindstone and get better.
- Moral support. Keep up the good work, and never, EVER stop fighting for justice!
-
I had figured I would mainly be most useful in terms of contributing some moniez if we get to that point, but if any of my skillz would be of use you are welcome to them.
As for categories, I guess i could fall into programmer, or sysadmin, or tester and, for that matter, my current crazy but interesting devops-y job is a mix of all three.
My coding languages are old-school C (which is fun, but maybe not so useful these days), and then some less fun but more modern stuff, like python and perl and php. My talent is probably system-level debugging, both in terms of natural bent, and because I have had a lot of opportunity to do that kind of work on complex systems in the jobs I have had over the years. I also do a [un]fair amount of testing, including Other People's Code (cuss dem). I used to beta and alpha test MMOs for amusement, but drifted away from that a couple of years back when I started my current job.
I'm decent at writing, and often entertain myself by making my documentation amusing as well as informative. Of course, that is amusing to me, which a nice transition to pointing out that my sense of humor could possibly qualify as... quirky. :3
Thanks for working on this, Titans.
-
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296759 (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296759)
Just in case some of you haven't seen it. We are making an impact. Keep fighting. Don't slow down, don't lose hope.
-
We're creeping closer to "mainstream" media.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-837330
-
I should also mention that I'm a linguist, for what it's worth.
My coding languages are old-school C (which is fun, but maybe not so useful these days)
Not true! Game development is still deeply entrenched in C. Graphics and system calls still go through C APIs. OpenGL is still pure C and consistently resisted OO abstraction. Most shading languages are C-likes. Knowing how to write structured C is super useful.
-
I'll offer one or more of these contributions, depending on which plan become the favorite:
Data analysis - cost/benefit analysis, forecasting future equipment needs and capital costs, manipulation of data in preparation for loading into databases, statistics, spreadsheets, reports, etc.
Coding and testing - no experience related to games besides being an avid player, and my memories of C / ASP.net / perl are rusty but recoverable. Served as a project manager, user representative, or QA lead on several internal software projects for a large company. These used a variety of databases, programming languages, and user interfaces; probably old stuff, but my experience with schema and pseudocode development could carry over to this project. On-time, bug-free releases were my specialty, along with designing very user-configurable systems.
Writing or proofreading in English - design documents, game content, and so forth.
Brainstorming - happy to develop ideas and work through pros/cons of implementing them into software, if we take a "CoH2" path and consider significant game updates such as a free-form power selection archetype, an AE-like scheme for user-defined costume pieces, or destructible environments.
Time - retired, so I have some to share. Would do the above work for free or expenses-only, on a worthy goal.
Money - to fund ownership of an open-source or otherwise community-driven game built on the "good ideas" from CoH.
-
Just wanted to say that you have my support, which right now would be what I would have been giving NCSoft monthly to play. I have a head for math -- no training, but am more than willing to learn. I also have 10+ years customer service under my belt, if that would help as well.
-
We're creeping closer to "mainstream" media.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-837330
o.o actually.. I've had 2 ppl tell me that they saw something about NCsoft shutting us down on the USA cable tv station's news. I didn't even know they had news... these two are completely independent of each other and 1 was aunt who didn't even know till now.. don't suppose anyone caught it or its on youtube?
<.< knowing C is somewhat useful I'm told. As I only know C++, Java, cobal, and GWBasic (o_o run in fear!!!) I'm doing this and checking post contents for spammers. o.o right! caught up on volunteers! thanks all! feel free to keep them coming, I have work tomorrow, so and posts will not be added till late night (unless one of the other admin get to it)
=^_^= keep at it! we can do this!
-
I've been searching around and haven't found anything beyond that iReport, however I will say I am in contact with somebody from CNN and will be filling that person in (with detail) about the situation and effort so we'll see. I can tell you if it does hit something more mainstream it could create quite a buzz.
-
Skills list:
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, 25+ years of professional programming experience, mainly business apps with a focus on database design and optimization. In the gaming world, plenty of time spent messing around with MUDs and networking basics.
Additionally, 15+ years of experience running small businesses, with a focus on HR/finance. My experience with tax law and business reporting is largely limited to the U.S.
-
As a published author I can provide editing and writing services, free of charge.
I am also fantastic at social media.
I am proficient with Abode products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.)
Keep fighting the good fight.
EDIT: I've also been maintaining the Twitter page, @SaveCoX
-
All I can really offer is financial support, moral support, and help spreading the word. This is one of my all time favorite games, and one I've been playing several times a week since it first came out. Save City of Heroes!
-
For some samples of my efforts in writing for CoH my Arcs (with cutscenes!) are provided below:
How did you make your cutscenes? I'm looking for ways of preserving the characters and things I've made in-game, whether through demorecords, screenshots, 3D ripping & shapeways etc.
-
I was a beta tester for City of Heroes way back in the mists of pre-history and have never let my sub lapse throughout the run. I want to do whatever I can to help save it.
I'm also a published author and just was accepted into the International Thriller Writers. I can offer both editing and writing skills. I also have a degree in fine art and do most of my own book covers and illustrations. For the last 15+ years, I've put together anthologies, booklets, novels and novelettes for various authors and writers' groups.
I'm very well versed in PageMaker (oldie, but goodie!) -- just getting my claws into InDesign. I'm fluent with Photoshop and have had a little training in some 3-D programs. I'm also mean with a really for real paintbrush, pencil, pen and markers.
-
EDIT: I've also been maintaining the Twitter page, @SaveCoX
I have nothing but respect for you. How in the world do you keep up with all this? I still need to walk the dog and finish getting ready for work! :)
-
I just wanted to reiterate one small but I think important thought:
As much as we all love City - and I *do*, the game was *immeasurably* improved by Issue 24. Blaster Improvements, New Power Pool adjustments and powers, customizable pool power effects, and some really cool new power sets including Martial Assault, Martial Combat, Water Blasting, and more!
http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/game_updates/issue_24/overview.php
I think pre-24 City is fun, but I think Issue 24 City is revolutionary - it's *that* much of an improvement!
And the good news is I had/have been playing on the beta server where I24 was live, and it all works! The code is all written and functional! (As much as any code is.)
We would be foolish I firmly believe, if we wind up bringing City back to life like a phoenix, not to bring it back in all its Issue 24 glory. So I *beg* of the powers that be, keep that at the forefront of your mind. I cannot imagine any scenario where City's codebase gets transferred where it wouldn't be just as simple to get the I24 version of City instead of the I23 one - so let's do it!
Cool?
-
Any reverse engineering effort (if it came down to that, it would be better to get the dev team back so we could actually have new content at a reasonable pace) would certainly be focused around the I24 beta client, as it was clearly ready to go when the news dropped.
Also, I wanted to take a second to say I'm amazed by the community response. I'm off in my corner doing what things on the technical side I can to help, but every time I hit refresh it seems like there's some new initiative, more press coverage, news of influential people chiming in, etc. It's truly like watching heroes in action.
Keep it up and I know we'll make a difference!
-
Also lets keep this in mind if we do save this thing we are not finished.
Let's make the NEXT step as well and prepare to fund crowd sourced advertising. Let's get some TV air time in larger cities. Let's take out some full page ads in newspapers saying, "We saved the game, now we save the rest of the world. We are Heroes, it's what we do."
-
TV ads are quite expensive; there's a reason Paragon Studios never tried it themselves.
But if the Titan crew manage to pull this off, they'll make Nerd History. I imagine that'll generate a lot of press.
-
Registered just so I could give my input and support. I was a previous longtime coh player and am ready to fully support any efforts to save the game.
Where I can help:
I have server administration background (and currently do that for my job) so if anything is needed in that area I can help.
I've done a lot of game testing and level design in the past so anything around that I can also help with.
-
Hey guys, Next Spirit here.
I wanted to make this known here. This is Obsidius's posts on the forums regarding the Twitch stream.
Quick notes:
This may be the last livestream (maybe not, who knows?)
Trying to enable VIP for ALL players & Double XP on ALL servers, as well as "as many holiday events as possible" (probably just one at a time, lamentably)
Due to possible stability issues, I24 will not be launched to Live, but it is on beta.
I24 is on Beta, and all the Market items are zeroed out (will not do on Live "just in case"; they don't want to possibly ruin the economy (presumably in case the game is saved via deus ex machina))
Cryptic did NOT kill CoH by witholding an engine license; the license was purchased in perpetuity for CoH and another unreleased project
SOE is not interested in purchasing CoH
Paragon Studio employess have to sign NDAs upon their termination which keeps them from discussing the closure of the studio.
CoH cannot be Kickstarted because it is not a new project
Indie studio aspirations are unlikely, but they would love to do it if there was capital, backing, etc.
If fans could raise enough funds, could CoH be saved? Unknown, ask the folks in Korea.
Ultimately unfeasible MA wish list items (due to dev hours required) - changing the rating system to a "Like" system; branching dialogue trees; UI work; map maker (would require base fix first); hooking up LUA to MA.
You'll never get to see the moon base (presumable was in development)
Base redesign - possible monotization options for apartment system, but never got past discussion phase
Servers run on Linux (of course)
Server maintenance must be run once a week to keep things running straight
Game/Engine will Never be released to public (presumable because it's not Open Source and the engine isn't legally theirs, it's Cryptic's)
No dev swag giveaways because it requires legal (legal is no longer available, the studio is closing)
There was a lot of stuff still in development
Last Friday was a very hard day, but ended up being inspirational, a last party and a sharing of memories, with beers afterwards.
Is there any hope? There's always hope...
Probably no I24 trailer
Unfortunately no word re: refunds, but wait for NCSoft to send more word.
Zwill and others will stay on as long as possible to turn the lights on/off
Turn on base raids? No, would require hard code.
Will VIPs remain so until close? Unknown, will verify to try to ensure that no one drops VIP.
No schedule of events b/c staff needs to be on moment's notice for job interviews, but will randomly pop in and do stuff
No ideas re: Omega slots
No special End of World event due to no devs, maybe spawning a bunch of stuff
Hugs for all!
Servers still scheduled to go dark Nov. 30th
Don't know what will happen to server/data assets when game ends
Devs play different MMOs (part of their job, actually)
If there is a pending lawsuit (ex: Worlds.com), they wouldn't be able to talk about it
Best bet to see where people end up? Follow them on social networks (Twitter, etc.). Can't talk about that stuff.
Zwill & staff appreciate the groundswell of support/ petitions/ etc. from the community!
Nothing in the works for *huge* PvP changes; Arbiter Hawk proposed a lot of changes, but it would have required a lot of time & resources required for other projects
Probably could NOT dedicate teams of devs or resources to PvP (PvP would never be the primary focus). Also, with the release of new powersets so frequently, PvP balance would have been "a nightmare".
Super secret project? Under NDA, and cancelled with the studio closure.
No new ATs were in the works
Matt Miller on Twitter: @MMODesigner
Melissa Bianco on Twitter:@MelissaBianco
Jesse Lawrence on Twitter: @HitStreak
Zwill's fondest memories: Player Summits (and player interactions on the forums)
NCSoft owns your characters (technically; whether or not they would choose to exercise that right if you used your character on another game or medium is doubtful ("IANAL"))
I24 included mouse pointer scaling to change the size of the pointer
Private server possibility? "IANAL", but probably not legal.
-
Customer service manager willing to offer secretarial and organizational skills. I have a community of people around me who i have brought to the game since playing in 2005. We are willing to offer financial support as well as our professional skills:
**english and drama professor willing to offer proof reading and story-boarding capabilities.
**customer service manager willing to do secretarial and organizational duties as well as field a customer service layout should the game be run by the community.
**an accountant at 1 of the top international accountant firms.
all of us computer savvy.
also at your disposal is a host of other people i have brought to paragon city, they are all around us and they will offer their funds and skills: journalist, pilot, real estate agent, mailman, nurse, IT specialist, music composer, banker, mechanic, photo editor, and more.
We're heroes... it's not something we choose, it's what we are. Its why COH calls out to us unlike the others. It's that connection we all have that makes this gaming community especially unique. we finally found a forum to be the better parts of ourselves alongside others doing the same thing. We have to maintain hope that we can overcome these insurmountable odds. After all, We're heroes, in the face of those odds, all we know to do is hope.
-
NCSoft owns your characters (technically; whether or not they would choose to exercise that right if you used your character on another game or medium is doubtful ("IANAL"))
This would be an interesting case to test, because while you can contract away copyright ownership for original works that you create (like a character), the legality of doing it through a blanket clickwrap license for characters you haven't even made yet when you agreed to it is somewhat dubious.
-
Also -- and I wish people would have thought about this before spamming him with questions he couldn't answer -- remember that Andy Belford is still technically employed by NCSoft, so anything he says has to officially represent their position, or he risks losing the means of supporting his family.
Sucks for him (and I say this as someone who's been in a similar position before), but we need to keep that in mind.
-
I know we already have banners, but I wanted to contribute!
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net%2Fhphotos-ak-snc7%2F3675_10151213967747658_1541005630_n.jpg)
-
This would be an interesting case to test, because while you can contract away copyright ownership for original works that you create (like a character), the legality of doing it through a blanket clickwrap license for characters you haven't even made yet when you agreed to it is somewhat dubious.
That's a good point. I think it was more in there to protect the game from situations caused by people saying they owned characters or whatever, and severely doubt it was ever intended to prevent us from using the characters in another form. If they did try to exercise their ownership, I don't believe it would hold up in court. More importantly, it would cost them money to protect something we created in a game they shut down. So...it's not really in their best interests.
-
That's a good point. I think it was more in there to protect the game from situations caused by people saying they owned characters or whatever, and severely doubt it was ever intended to prevent us from using the characters in another form. If they did try to exercise their ownership, I don't believe it would hold up in court. More importantly, it would cost them money to protect something we created in a game they shut down. So...it's not really in their best interests.
While I know this won't stop them if they want to dive into the past dbase dumps and get character info. But I will be deleting all my toons on every server I played on, before they turn out the lights.
-
How did you make your cutscenes? I'm looking for ways of preserving the characters and things I've made in-game, whether through demorecords, screenshots, 3D ripping & shapeways etc.
Use demorecord and manually edited the code. It was... painstaking.
I'm going to make a post in a new thread once I have some work done but I'm currently in the process of using demorecord and a simple plotting program to make a virtual coordinate map for each outdoor map in the game - and some indoor maps - so that in the event that CoH shuts down indefinitely the game can still live on in demorecord edits.
But I want to post my work on here in case that can be used for any reverse-engineering for map replication. More info on that (and in its own thread to keep on topic) later in the month when I've done some compiling.
Go. Hunt. Save CoH.
Evangel | Infinity Server
-
TV ads are quite expensive; there's a reason Paragon Studios never tried it themselves.
But if the Titan crew manage to pull this off, they'll make Nerd History. I imagine that'll generate a lot of press.
As I have worked in advertising and television I can second this - even local station ads can run a couple thousand a pop, wide-coverage stations can peak at 5-digits in high population, and major cable and network stations are 5+ digits for ad time.
MMOs have a more niche audiences, I think your periodical ads would certainly be more effect, along with online advertising.
Has anyone thought about contacting Superherohype.com? (the old Spider-Man Hype website that now covers ALL comic-related tv and media) I bet Titan could get an interview on there, and wouldn't be surprised if the SHH staff wouldn't further reach out to the Devs - provided the devs are legally allowed to conduct interviews, which might be a clause in their contracts that prohibit that if fired. Either way SHH would probably give Titan the press, and if we ever did have ads I'm sure SHH would support them for lower cost even.
Go. Hunt. Save CoH.
Evangel | Infinity Server
-
I could possible whip something up in Blender as a video about the end on Nov 30
-
I thought the best way to proceed for a takeover given the information that's been coming out this week, so as promised, I'm posting it now in as best detail as I can:
Step 1: Initiation of Contact
Send a "delivery confirmation" letter to NCSoft, copies to its board, CEO, and soon-to-be-discovered person responsible for IP and contracts. The letter will emphasize that we believe the City of Heroes franchise need to be utilized, and that this letter explains how it will be profitable for all parties involved.
In the same letter, we make an offer to take over operations of City of Heroes and Paragon Studios, in exchange for paying a negotiated one-time flat fee plus 10% of all net proceeds earned to NCSoft, on either a monthly or quarterly basis. NCSoft retains the trademarks and IP, but bears none of the costs.
We also offer, in the same letter, the option to purchase entirely the entire City of Heroes and Paragon Studios IP and all trademarks at a later date, with profits excluding the 10% that goes to NCSoft. So even if we buy the property next month, they still get the 10% on top of the purchase for that month (if we didn't include that, they would require it anyhow). This clause also opens the option for NCSoft to reject the first offer (the licensing) and accept the second (full purchase).
The reasons why I believe this option is best:
A) I have experience with negotiating licensing/operational agreements, and they're much simpler than IP transfer agreements (I'm not a lawyer, though).
B) If NCSoft axed City of Heroes with the intention of keeping the IP in case it chooses to release a City of Heroes 2 later on, they will be more likely to accept.
C) I believe this is the most effective way to raise money and make this happen.
D) If another party is currently making a cash purchase offer, our offer will not interfere with theirs; However, another company is unlikely to pursue a license/operating agreement, so they won't interfere with us either. In other words, this method is friendliest to anyone else attempting to purchase CoH right now.
Note, of course, that NCSoft could still reject both parts of the deal outright; or we could be beaten to the punch by someone else; or the letter could simply be returned, or vanish with no reply. Step 1 is by far the most fragile. In fact, the best case scenario right now is probably NCSoft asking for a much higher percentage.
Step 2: Fundraising
The second step is raising money. This can be as difficult as Step 1, and cannot be completed before Step 1 - because we don't know yet what the license fee will be, or what the purchase price will be if that situation arises. Step 1 is also not a sure thing, so if we raise money prematurely, we're stuck figuring out how to return it.
Once we know approximately how much we need, we will most likely have to pursue multiple avenues to get it. We might need anywhere from a few hundred thousand to several million dollars. At that scale, we're going to need to have enough margin built into that to pay an expert to manage that money, so we don't scare away anyone contributing/investing. Why? Because who would invest $100,000 if they don't think we're responsible? The less management we have, the less money people will be willing to invest.
We also need an expert to determine if we're going to have to pay any tax on the money raised, or what we can legally do to avoid that. Not just someone who does their brother's taxes, because once again, this is a confidence issue. We want anyone making a significant investment to feel that every dollar is safely accounted for.
Step 3: Restructuring
Quite a lot of City of Heroes is currently tied to NCSoft. If we're to be the new, independent operators, we're going to lose some very expensive pieces that NCSoft will no longer help with. We will have no Account Server, no Account Reps, and no Support Reps.
We also do not know how much NCSoft has been subsidizing Paragon Studios, so it's somewhat to very likely we will not be able to re-hire everyone. Tough decisions will have to be made both by current/former Paragon staff, at who stays and who goes. Tough decisions will have to be made by players as to how much hardship they're willing to accept as a result of more difficult Support and Account help.
More tough decisions will have to be made about how much a monthly subscription will be, and how the Paragon Store item prices will be restructured. It's very important that, at least initially, City of Heroes brings in as much profit as possible, without losing too many subscribers in the process.
That also means, of course, we need people who love numbers, and figuring things out.
As for technology, we will need help from people familiar with the pre-Launcher patch server, and web site designers to not only set up account management via the CoH web site, but also modify the CoH web site so it no longer relies on links to NCSoft. Additionally, this includes a new ticket support system not tied to NCSoft, and possibly volunteers to handle in-game GM duties until that structure is re-built and put in place.
Step 4: Moving Forward
City of Heroes operation will not succeed if it stays where it is. People will get bored and move on to other games, or cancel their monthly subscriptions and go free, and use CoH as a chat client to talk occasionally to friends. It's a law of the nature of gaming.
That means to remain profitable, the development schedule must move forward.
I would leave most of this in the hands of the people left at Paragon Studios because they're good at it; but I would suggest the release of Issue 24 quickly, on a skeleton crew if necessary, along with any Paragon Store items they can create rapidly. Because staffing will be a problem at first, the faster something comes out that generates more player interest, the better. It brings in more profit, and the chances more hiring, and the chances of further quick releases.
If we're going to follow this plan we have to do it quickly. I've been noticing that following the flurry of rallies and protests this weekend, players are starting to drift away and vanish, assuming there won't be a game around soon, and they may as well find something else. Since, if we take over the operation of CoH, we'll have to make do without outside help, and with 10% or so less profit, we can't lose a lot of players.
That's all I have for now, any questions or comments?
-
My Skills:
Professional (Someone once paid me to do this)
Retail Management, Large Corporation, Best at Logistics/Organization/Intuiting Numbers
Medical Care-Taking, focus on children
Business to Business sales, Medium to Medium and Small Businesses
Driving, nothing huge-sized, but safely and over a long period of time
Merchandising, mostly grocery and retail stores
Food Service (Quick! Titan needs Steaks!!!) ;)
Other
Extensive table-top gamer (running and playing), Board Gamer, and Wargamer
Radio Announcer in college (WXJM)
Co-Founded/Organized Gaming/Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention (Madicon)
Huge reader, with a special talent to remember lots of detail and where I read it.
Public Speaking, Performance and Formal Debate Skills (High School and College competitons)
Working within large volunteer organization spanning global geographical locations and comprised of very independent and strongly opinionated advocates (OWbN)
-
Hi,
I'm afraid I don't have much to offer, but you have my support and whatever money I would have used continuing the yearly subscription on my three CoH accounts.
This game and community (especially The Cape Radio) has been a huge part of my life for over eight years. I tried other games in the interim, some of which distracted me for a little while, but I never let my subs voluntarily lapse (the times they did lapse was because I forgot to update my cc expiry). I always came back to sweet home CoH, and I want to keep coming back.
Go get 'em, fellas.
-
I thought the best way to proceed for a takeover given the information that's been coming out this week, so as promised, I'm posting it now in as best detail as I can:
Step 1: Initiation of Contact
Send a "delivery confirmation" letter to NCSoft, copies to its board, CEO, and soon-to-be-discovered person responsible for IP and contracts. The letter will emphasize that we believe the City of Heroes franchise need to be utilized, and that this letter explains how it will be profitable for all parties involved.
In the same letter, we make an offer to take over operations of City of Heroes and Paragon Studios, in exchange for paying a negotiated one-time flat fee plus 10% of all net proceeds earned to NCSoft, on either a monthly or quarterly basis. NCSoft retains the trademarks and IP, but bears none of the costs.
We also offer, in the same letter, the option to purchase entirely the entire City of Heroes and Paragon Studios IP and all trademarks at a later date, with profits excluding the 10% that goes to NCSoft. So even if we buy the property next month, they still get the 10% on top of the purchase for that month (if we didn't include that, they would require it anyhow). This clause also opens the option for NCSoft to reject the first offer (the licensing) and accept the second (full purchase).
The reasons why I believe this option is best:
A) I have experience with negotiating licensing/operational agreements, and they're much simpler than IP transfer agreements (I'm not a lawyer, though).
B) If NCSoft axed City of Heroes with the intention of keeping the IP in case it chooses to release a City of Heroes 2 later on, they will be more likely to accept.
C) I believe this is the most effective way to raise money and make this happen.
D) If another party is currently making a cash purchase offer, our offer will not interfere with theirs; However, another company is unlikely to pursue a license/operating agreement, so they won't interfere with us either. In other words, this method is friendliest to anyone else attempting to purchase CoH right now.
Note, of course, that NCSoft could still reject both parts of the deal outright; or we could be beaten to the punch by someone else; or the letter could simply be returned, or vanish with no reply. Step 1 is by far the most fragile. In fact, the best case scenario right now is probably NCSoft asking for a much higher percentage.
Step 2: Fundraising
The second step is raising money. This can be as difficult as Step 1, and cannot be completed before Step 1 - because we don't know yet what the license fee will be, or what the purchase price will be if that situation arises. Step 1 is also not a sure thing, so if we raise money prematurely, we're stuck figuring out how to return it.
Once we know approximately how much we need, we will most likely have to pursue multiple avenues to get it. We might need anywhere from a few hundred thousand to several million dollars. At that scale, we're going to need to have enough margin built into that to pay an expert to manage that money, so we don't scare away anyone contributing/investing. Why? Because who would invest $100,000 if they don't think we're responsible? The less management we have, the less money people will be willing to invest.
We also need an expert to determine if we're going to have to pay any tax on the money raised, or what we can legally do to avoid that. Not just someone who does their brother's taxes, because once again, this is a confidence issue. We want anyone making a significant investment to feel that every dollar is safely accounted for.
Step 3: Restructuring
Quite a lot of City of Heroes is currently tied to NCSoft. If we're to be the new, independent operators, we're going to lose some very expensive pieces that NCSoft will no longer help with. We will have no Account Server, no Account Reps, and no Support Reps.
We also do not know how much NCSoft has been subsidizing Paragon Studios, so it's somewhat to very likely we will not be able to re-hire everyone. Tough decisions will have to be made both by current/former Paragon staff, at who stays and who goes. Tough decisions will have to be made by players as to how much hardship they're willing to accept as a result of more difficult Support and Account help.
More tough decisions will have to be made about how much a monthly subscription will be, and how the Paragon Store item prices will be restructured. It's very important that, at least initially, City of Heroes brings in as much profit as possible, without losing too many subscribers in the process.
That also means, of course, we need people who love numbers, and figuring things out.
As for technology, we will need help from people familiar with the pre-Launcher patch server, and web site designers to not only set up account management via the CoH web site, but also modify the CoH web site so it no longer relies on links to NCSoft. Additionally, this includes a new ticket support system not tied to NCSoft, and possibly volunteers to handle in-game GM duties until that structure is re-built and put in place.
Step 4: Moving Forward
City of Heroes operation will not succeed if it stays where it is. People will get bored and move on to other games, or cancel their monthly subscriptions and go free, and use CoH as a chat client to talk occasionally to friends. It's a law of the nature of gaming.
That means to remain profitable, the development schedule must move forward.
I would leave most of this in the hands of the people left at Paragon Studios because they're good at it; but I would suggest the release of Issue 24 quickly, on a skeleton crew if necessary, along with any Paragon Store items they can create rapidly. Because staffing will be a problem at first, the faster something comes out that generates more player interest, the better. It brings in more profit, and the chances more hiring, and the chances of further quick releases.
If we're going to follow this plan we have to do it quickly. I've been noticing that following the flurry of rallies and protests this weekend, players are starting to drift away and vanish, assuming there won't be a game around soon, and they may as well find something else. Since, if we take over the operation of CoH, we'll have to make do without outside help, and with 10% or so less profit, we can't lose a lot of players.
That's all I have for now, any questions or comments?
I have a comment. I like this plan and am fully behind it's implementation.
-
I will be absent until the end of September due to travels
-
If we're going to follow this plan we have to do it quickly. I've been noticing that following the flurry of rallies and protests this weekend, players are starting to drift away and vanish, assuming there won't be a game around soon, and they may as well find something else.
Hmm.... I hope we can at least partly blame it on the announcement happening over a long weekend and at the end of summer holidays for many, with a subsequent scramble back to work/school. I didn't make it back home till past 8PM PST *Grumble*.
This looks to be a comparatively realistic set of plans and compromises. Steps 3/4 may turn out very differently though, depending on how 1 goes.
-
Quite a lot of City of Heroes is currently tied to NCSoft. If we're to be the new, independent operators, we're going to lose some very expensive pieces that NCSoft will no longer help with. We will have no Account Server
That is going to be the biggest problem if we have to build it from scratch. The community has provided support for pretty much everything.
-
Hey all, I've whacked out three pages of comments that descended into bickering about keeping the existing CoH versus writing a new game. I've kept the remainder of the thread in a new post named A Dissent (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5076.0.html). I'm not trying to shut down this conversation, I just don't want it cluttering up this thread.
I will take a second to say that right now, we still have several options open to us. Some of them have a lot shorter time period in which we have to act than others. Building a new game from scratch is one of those that has a much longer time period, so I don't want to distract our focus on the smaller windows by arguing over it right now. If we get to a point where those options need to be explored, I assure you that they will be explored thoroughly. I also assure you that we are currently working very hard on ensuring that we have any data and documentation that we need to progress at that time if it comes to that.
-
Leave it to TonyV to see reason. lol
-
Leave it to TonyV to see reason. lol
Indeed. Thanks for keeping us all on task Tony! :)
-
I had a thought that may help. I've only just started understanding the reason for the shutting down of CoH and that was due to the below 125,000 subscription player base according to this. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/01/hang-up-your-cape-city-of-heroes-to-close/ Maybe the "quitting while you're ahead" line was used and it just made sense to pull the plug?
So I was thinking. I've been going to Newgrounds.com and playing some of their free games and they have impressed me. Some are better and have more replayability then other games one would pay for. Armor Games comes to mind in a flash.
I almost wonder if they could help in some way? Money is the issue here isn't it? As well as a player base that has remained low for some time. Would looking into getting anyone in Armor Games or New Grounds help at all?
-
I had a thought that may help. I've only just started understanding the reason for the shutting down of CoH and that was due to the below 125,000 subscription player base according to this. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/01/hang-up-your-cape-city-of-heroes-to-close/ Maybe the "quitting while you're ahead" line was used and it just made sense to pull the plug?
So I was thinking. I've been going to Newgrounds.com and playing some of their free games and they have impressed me. Some are better and have more replayability then other games one would pay for. Armor Games comes to mind in a flash.
I almost wonder if they could help in some way? Money is the issue here isn't it? As well as a player base that has remained low for some time. Would looking into getting anyone in Armor Games or New Grounds help at all?
Well, I don't really know that money is the issue. Thing is, CoH was making money. It's just, it wasn't popular in the Asian markets that matter to NCSoft and its shareholders (like Nexon). If money is a cause, it is only insofar as it wasn't enough money to make shutting down a demonstrably bad decision.
Money is, however, relevant. Mainly because it'll take a lot of it to buy an IP from a company that, to my knowledge, has not sold any IP ever. Not that it's impossible, just that it'll be expensive - which brings me to Newgrounds.
I don't know that Newgrounds is a bad idea. But only in two capacities. Firstly, they can help us get further support from the gaming community (which has shocked me with relatively high levels of support so far). Secondly, they could be investors for the game. Newgrounds invests in the game, and maybe some billboards in Paragon City are about Newgrounds or their popular games. I have no idea how much money Newgrounds makes though, so even that may not be feasible.
-
One thought to remember: The gaming press has been (mistakenly) pushing the mantra for a while now that full-fledged gaming and MMO's are dead, and i-device casual gaming is the future. Of course, these are the same press who say the desktop PC is dead and it's all going to be tablets and phones from now on. But it also doesn't help that the guy responsible for keeping Windows gaming healthy, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, believes the mantra and wants Windows 8 to kill gaming by turning W8 into a tablet experience.
But, what if in Korea (and China) where the desktop PC is alive and well, and MMO's are top of the market, the companies there are starting to believe the American press? It would be only natural for them to say, let's pull out now and stay in Korea where the market is healthy before those i-Devices and casual games ruin us in North America.
So this may be NCSoft short of cash, or it could be they're reacting to what the industry press is mistakenly telling them is the future. Or both.
As an aside: It may become a self-fulfilling prophesy someday. More MMO's are being made by companies based outside the U.S., and more casual games are being made *in* the U.S. It's possible the markets may separate, making it harder for Americans to get access to MMO's, and be stuck with only casual games.
This doesn't really affect our plan, it's just speculation of why NCSoft may have decided to kill CoH. It also increases (slightly) the possibility they'll be willing to be rid of it if they can sell or license it, if their primary motivation is indeed to get out of the U.S. market before, they believe, MMO's become irrelevant here.
-
As someone who is definitely interested in lending whatever support I can to the efforts to save CoX...
I am a senior software engineer. C/C++/Java/Assembly and more in multiple platforms. Also SQL, sockets, OpenGL, and more. While I currently work doing java/javascript at a VOIP company, I was doing C/C++ for a long time before now. I'm all for emulation, especially if we can open-source the server code to provide a way for open hosting and clustering.
I've been programming for over 30 years. Let me know how I can help out!
-
We need to gain the support of the Asian game market.
I've advertised it to some while I was in china one loved it and another said the graphics were lame and it had no chinese typing ability so he didn't want to play.
I say we start making COH and CoV advertisement banners saying "better graphics and chinese typing coming soon, look intestesting then contact NCSoft and tell them (URL here)" of coarse say it in chinese I can help with translation a bit.
and then find someway to send these advertisement banners to china, then of coarse korea in korean.
-
We need to gain the support of the Asian game market.
I've advertised it to some while I was in china one loved it and another said the graphics were lame and it had no chinese typing ability so he didn't want to play.
I say we start making COH and CoV advertisement banners saying "better graphics and chinese typing coming soon, look intestesting then contact NCSoft and tell them (URL here)" of coarse say it in chinese I can help with translation a bit.
and then find someway to send these advertisement banners to china, then of coarse korea in korean.
CoX had some minimal undocumented support for Korean, Japanese, and Traditional Chinese (but not Simplified), probably because NC had offices in Korea and Taiwan but not China. The chat overhaul and new market interface broke it badly, though.
-
As someone who is definitely interested in lending whatever support I can to the efforts to save CoX...
I am a senior software engineer. C/C++/Java/Assembly and more in multiple platforms. Also SQL, sockets, OpenGL, and more. While I currently work doing java/javascript at a VOIP company, I was doing C/C++ for a long time before now. I'm all for emulation, especially if we can open-source the server code to provide a way for open hosting and clustering.
I've been programming for over 30 years. Let me know how I can help out!
Why does my degree/experience look neat when talking to RL friends, but crap/outmatched when talking here/ingame? >.<
-
CoH is naturally appealing to a self-selecting horde of tens of thousands of tech-lovers...and then that group self-selects once again to get here on the Titan Network. No fear, you're in good company!
-
Am I correct in my assumption you all decided not to do an emu for CoX?
-
Am I correct in my assumption you all decided not to do an emu for CoX?
Look up SEGS
-
I'm on SEGS and have asked them the same question. But you all are not related to SEGS and from previous posts here I know there had been discussions here about an EMU.
-
I can tell you now, as someone in the know, that Titan Network is not working on any emulation or reverse-engineering projects and does not wish to be affiliated with any such project.
However...
I can also tell you, as someone in the know, that many people who coincidentally happen to be members of Titan Network are working on emulation and reverse-engineering projects and that progress is moving along quite well. (-:
-
THIS is the main reason I have decided to leave Titan Network. While not "endorsing" an emulator...some of those involved in the Titan Network are involved in the emulator project.
I refuse to be involved with any type of illegal activity on a morality front and a professional front. The fact that Titan turns a blind eye to this; and basically supports an emulator, is the reason that this will be my last post on these forums. The Save CoH movement has been all about the slogan "We are heroes...this is what we do." Apparently the "This" is meant to include illegal activities.... Yeah no thanks.
I choose to let go of the game and let it go out in a heroic manner... instead of joining a bunch of thieves who refuse to let go when the time arrives. No matter how you may try to sugar coat it; no matter how much you think you are "owed"...an emulator is nothing but stealing and highly illegal.
Had a great 7+ years, but I know when it's time to let things go.
I can tell you now, as someone in the know, that Titan Network is not working on any emulation or reverse-engineering projects and does not wish to be affiliated with any such project.
However...
I can also tell you, as someone in the know, that many people who coincidentally happen to be members of Titan Network are working on emulation and reverse-engineering projects and that progress is moving along quite well. (-:
-
Members might be working on an emulator but not Titan Network.
Blaming Titan network for something who isn't payed by the Titan, isn't ordered by Titan, isn't involved in Titan except by being on a Forum. IS foolish.
Titan Network is building a New game. Members who are doing their own emulation projects are discouraged. But with out hacking into their computers braking any rights they have. There is no way Titan Network can control people who doing something of their own.
Burnt Toast we all are here working for free. Only things that are posted and talked about are accepted. Independence operations can't be controlled. IF who ever trying an Emulation posts on the board They will be punished and perchance have the membership terminated. We want Plan Z 100% LEGAL with Tributes to both Superhero MMOS and Comics.
Judging a Group on believed actions of a handful of members seems foolish to me. Like hating a game community because you heard one person in said community was a jerk.
-
While I won't be a party to emulator efforts, even playing on one, I won't judge anyone trying. However, caution should be put in place to anyone playing on an emulator. NcSoft shuts them down and does look for them. To me this is the biggest problem with emulators and why I won't risk my time utilizing one.
I want to be a part of something new and that is where Titan and Plan Z come in. However, like Ms. Lackey I am waiting until the tax write-off portion of the year is finished before I fully give up on the save CoH movement. I will lend my literary support when we get down to writing, but as of right now I'm still in a holding pattern. November 30th may be the end of a NcSoft run CoH, but it shouldn't be the end of the movement.
-
I'm sure most people gave up on NCsoft change of heart.
If there is an emulator being made it must NOT BE CONNECTED TO TITAN NETWORK! If your working on one and the Plan Z operations... ask yourself this do you want to give NCsoft ammo to take Plan z away from us via Lawsuit?
If you want the emulator leave. If you want Plan Z to go ahead and working on the emulator STOP.
-
I'll settle for the emulated private server when it's up. no offense to plan Z.
fact is if the private server is free or donation based NCSoft can't do much about it, especially if they close their own game.
on another note, theres a patent rule for videogames, after 7 years from the last game made of a certain series the rights are relinquished.
so in 7 years if NCSoft doens;t make another city of heroes game or restart this one then they open up the window for private servers to make money off of it.
so basically they have 7 years to sell/do something with the IP, if not then we get it for free.
I'm not actually helping much with plan Z any more.. got my own game titles working.
-
fact is if the private server is free or donation based NCSoft can't do much about it, especially if they close their own game.
What tends to happen with this sort of thing is that if the amateur project doesn't close up shop when the IP holder tells them to, the IP holder will attempt to prosecute under some presumptions of copyright infringement, intellectual property theft or any number of other provably inapplicable crimes. However, the fledgeling volunteer-supported project won't have the funds to combat the bogus court case, won't be able to represent themselves in whatever district the IP holder decides on (the internet is a pretty broad region), and the IP holder will consequently win by default.
Even though it's not illegal, a private server for some commercial game that closes down CAN still be forced to pay a fine, if not receive some other harsher punishment.
on another note, theres a patent rule for videogames, after 7 years from the last game made of a certain series the rights are relinquished.
so in 7 years if NCSoft doens;t make another city of heroes game or restart this one then they open up the window for private servers to make money off of it.
so basically they have 7 years to sell/do something with the IP, if not then we get it for free.
First things first, this is simply not true. To gain some insight, I did some searching around to find something related to patents/copyright/intellectual property/trademarks of video games relating to the magic 7 year number. The best I could find was reference to copyrights to published works starting in 1996 that last for the lifetime of the "principal director", plus another 70 years after that. It could be you're misremembering what you heard.
-
I'll settle for the emulated private server when it's up. no offense to plan Z.
fact is if the private server is free or donation based NCSoft can't do much about it, especially if they close their own game.
on another note, theres a patent rule for videogames, after 7 years from the last game made of a certain series the rights are relinquished.
so in 7 years if NCSoft doens;t make another city of heroes game or restart this one then they open up the window for private servers to make money off of it.
so basically they have 7 years to sell/do something with the IP, if not then we get it for free.
I'm not actually helping much with plan Z any more.. got my own game titles working.
Dont think 7 years is true or elsemany video games would of been free game (no pun intended) a long time ago.
But if the emultor come to fruitation, I hope who ever runs it is mindful of things or else in short notice we'll all be here again angry at NCSoft because they shut down the emulator or something else happened that may not involved NCsoft.
I think Plan Z is good plan but realize games take forever (years in many cases) to make and plan even when working with a full blown studio, and millions of dollars in budget wit ha team of 40 or so professional devs and different departments to handle art work, storylines, marketing, software, graphics, organization, PR, HR, office cleaner, testers, drink fetchers, the boss, and the likes. Here, it seems to be a skeleton crew an a budget that barely covers a shoestring so I would imagine it will take abou three times to four times as long at a good pace.
Right now it's the honey moon stage, ideas are flowing, people are enthused, determined, but sometimes I worry, although I have faith in them, is about what happens when it down to the nitty gritty buisness aspect, and when it's about a year or so in the project will they have the will to finish. I think so but if not I wont think any less of them as taking on the task of creating a whole new game is not for the light hearted. It looks harder than building a car from a pile of metal to Rolls-Royce specs on a Yugo budget.
-
Take a good long look at what's already been accomplished.
Yes, Plan Z is going to take a while, but not three or four times a regular studio, I think.
A regular studio has a real budget and specific designers, true, but more "Professional?" We've got some good people involved, both amateur and professional, working on various things. What we have is something I haven't seen in any game before.
A game *Community* set up *before* the game was started, giving Plan Z a huge pool of people and talents to draw from. And the Devs for Plan Z are doing a good job of doing just that.
Take a good long read through the threads and look at what's already been done, including a lot of things that either weren't feasible for CoH, or weren't possible due to the game engine, NCSoftcore wouldn't fund it, or for whatever reason, that are on the Plan Z "We're going to attempt to do this" list on a dozen different threads.
Hell, what I've seen on Plan Z from the forums has done something that nothing else has done in nearly 20 years: Gotten *me* off my butt to get involved. ;]
Whether getting me involved was a *good* thing or a *bad* thing, well, that's for others to decide. ;]
2cp. ;]
-
That is true and didnt consider alot of that stuff.
Plan Z didnt have to really go out and find people, they were already here. Usually that in itself can be a very long process.
Not to mention, already have a community to bounce ideas around unlike having to create the game and hope for the best.
And also we already had a basis to work on instead having to come up with it all from scratch and trying to figure out what to do. Plan Z is already at the now that there is an idea of what is aimed to be put in it's about how to organize it into a game.
Hmmm, it may not take so long after all.
And word around is that at least one company is interested in giving financial support so that may solve that.
Well then to hell with NCSoft, we dont need NCSoft, we have Plan Z, son.
-
As far as *I'm* concerned, the best of all worlds is they manage to buy the CoH IP outright, and everything we're doing in Plan Z becomes Titan City, Paragon City's sister city to the north/east/south/west.
End result: We end up with CoH continuing to operate till Plan Z is finished, and because we *own* the IP, everything from CoH is *in* Plan Z, cleaned up and fixed, and we end up with CoH2.
Yup, I'm a dreamer, but someone has to.
Oh, look! there's a *lot* of someone's involved in this. ;]
2cp. ;]
-
The law governing patents does not bear any impact on copyrights. These are two very different things.
-
I always thought video game patents were 20 years.
I remember a big stink being made about MAME being able to include pac-man with the download of the mame software as the original pac-man game rom had run the course of it's copyright.
Also, to the best of my knowledge is that anyone working on reverse engineering the coh servers can do so for educational purposes, is that correct?
to go back to the MAME analogy to explain, it is ok for someone to have the MAME software. It is not ok for someone to have the double dragon motherboard dump (hereafter referred to as rom) unless they also own the double dragon motherboard itself. So for coh, it would be ok to have a working server copy for educaiton purposes, ie to learn how it worked, but not to have the coh rom (containing the intellectual property, such as Positron).
for anything I've said here that's wrong, feel free to debunk me, also, please let me know it was wrong as I would not want to be handing out misinformation.
-
Anyway, what I'm pondering is contacting the powers-that-be at Paragon Studios and NCsoft and find out if there's any way possible that something can be worked out for us to keep the servers on. Whether that be through acquiring the IP and codebase, licensing technologies, releasing their tech specs to us so that we can reverse engineer the server and client, whatever. I just find it really hard to think that NCsoft is going to sit on IP and code and completely shutter a project if there are people willing to pony up cash for it.
I support Titan Network's decision on this, and I will be willing to send some funds via paypal for the cause, let's get this ball rollin cause I want to play with a the big boys. Also I have played around with 3D modling & vertex shaders/renders, as well as some hobbies done with C++, and HTML 1-3 in the past, so if you want a novice editor designer on board I'd be glad to come along with little to no pay, because I would love to be apart of the staff on this.
-
I can tell you now, as someone in the know, that Titan Network is not working on any emulation or reverse-engineering projects and does not wish to be affiliated with any such project.
However...
I can also tell you, as someone in the know, that many people who coincidentally happen to be members of Titan Network are working on emulation and reverse-engineering projects and that progress is moving along quite well. (-:
pm me if said people would like a hand in their ....studies.
-
For funding I think we should start a kickstarter.
I am not creative, have no designing or art skills but I can be good for story stuff. I just do not know where to go in the plan z / phoenix etc to go start pitching any ideas or know how to start getting involved in such things.
-
I have only one serious concern - let's say the game gets off the ground and is a smashing success - then the lawsuits start.
What sort of release/profit sharing agreement do you have? It is often not thought out how open source stuff will work and when you get a couple million in profit rolling in all of the sudden the water is full of sharks. Seeing a new game open and then slam shut due to greed and a lack of preparation is a serious concern.
-
I have only one serious concern - let's say the game gets off the ground and is a smashing success - then the lawsuits start.
SWG seems fine and they're totally out in the open.
-
As of right now the latest news is from January 1st.
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7585.0/topicseen.html (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7585.0/topicseen.html)
Team Wild Card is doing the Task Force Hail Mary. What you can do to help is write to Disney and anyone else that we can contact who has the power and funds to buy the CoH IP from NCsoft. A side quest is to contact news media outlets. Human interest stories keep the word out we as a community will not go quietly!
Long term operations are the Plan Z tasks.
Heroes and Villains as well as The Phoenix Project. Both are making a new Superhero MMO using City of heroes as a guide. It wouldn't be CoH2 but be closer to home then Champions or DCUO.
What you can do there is join the forums (BOTH!) and offer ideas or join in one of the teams writing stories or programming.
Last and not least. NEVER EVER GIVE UP. This is our darkest hour and our chance to shine the brightest. Even a single candle of hope can keep the darkness away.
Remember this is first and foremost. We are Paragon city. our community what made City of Heroes great our Devs love for the game and our love for the game. The joy of helping a newbie learn the ropes. The fun of doing a new story with a new team. We are Paragon always and forever they may have kicked us out of our servers but they can't take City of heroes out of us. When you play a new game carry Paragon with you. Help a new player, show them what our community is about. Because even with out our game we are still Paragon City we are still a Community of heroes and I for one will always be proud of being a member of that.
-
im really excited for plan z/ phoenix project/ heroes and villians, shame we wont see anything playable for years. i wish i was able to help w the back end but at best i could write or edit stories
-
Head on over to the Phoenix Project boards (http://missingworldsmedia.com/forums/index.php) and introduce yourself to the Lore and Story boards if you're interested; I'm pretty sure SithRose and Xivilai still have plenty of work they can hand out to willing volunteers.