None whatsoever. It didn't help us before and will actually harm the current efforts.
That's not true. There is no indication that it would make a difference to "current efforts" one way or another.
Personal opinion o' Tony is as follows:
I'm personally boycotting NCsoft games. Not so much because of City of Heroes specifically (though that is part of it), but because they have shut down five games now that I know of: Exteel, Dungeon Runners, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, and City of Heroes. A sixth is, in my opinion, likely on the cusp of being shut down, Wildstar.
The MMORPG genre is particularly conducive to spending inordinate amounts of time, effort, and money on games to be successful. Personally, I probably spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 on City of Heroes, if you count three trips to California to meet up at Player Summits, two subscriptions for almost the entire run of the game, bonus packs and "Paragon Points" on the market after the launch of CoH: Freedom, hosting costs for the Paragon Wiki, these forums, and the Titan Network sites, plus miscellaneous expenses. (But not including probably $2000 or $3000 over the course of the years in computer upgrades that I probably would have foregone were it not for me wanting to see Ultra Mode in all of its glory...)
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't regret spending that. I know people who have hobbies such as golf, woodworking, or car stereos that spend a lot more. I genuinely enjoyed playing the game and being part of the community it fostered. But there's also still no denying that the day they shut down the servers, I felt like most of that investment was simply gone without any kind of visible trace.
So hopefully it's pretty obvious when I say that I have been
extremely reluctant to invest in any MMORPG since then. I have at least tried Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Elder Scrolls Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Neverwinter, and probably two or three more games that I don't even remember. None have really "stuck" in that right now, I'm not playing any of them. I even went so far as to buy the "Hero of the North" or whatever the top tier perk pack was called was Neverwinter and some Zen (currency) to burn on some extra in-game swag thinking that surely I would stick with that game, but after about a month or two of playing, I just kind of fell away from it. I just didn't feel like sinking a crapton more money and time into another game knowing that eventually it will probably shut down also, without any kind of effort to ensure the community that once they decided to pull the plug, the community won't just be hung out to dry.
So in that sense, I genuinely feel that NCsoft has poisoned the well when it comes to MMORPGs for me. And if I'm not eager to really engage in other MMORPGs, I sure as hell am not going to reward the company that made it clear in no uncertain terms that it prioritizes some nebulous long-term business strategy over a profitable game and dedicated community. If other people just plain find Guild Wars 2, Lineage I or II, or Wildstar so irresistible that they're willing to throw money at them even after what happened especially to Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes fans, then more power to them. But I urge each and every one of them to seriously consider before spending one cent in those games, what if NCsoft decides tomorrow that their game isn't in the long-term business interest of the company? Would you still shell out your hard-earned money knowing that the game is living on borrowed time?
As for "current efforts," I surely do wish that people would stop trying to guess what's in the heads of NCsoft executives. I assure you that whatever it is you think they're thinking, you're almost certainly wrong. Under the current management, there's no amount of "respecting their culture" or "avoiding making waves" that will change their mind about City of Heroes. The truth of the matter is that NCsoft is
engaged in a political battle with Nexon right now that puts any kind of squabbles over City of Heroes
really low on their radar. In fact, there's some question over whether
NCsoft is even the right company to be approaching over releasing City of Heroes.
My point is that people saying that doing
X or not doing
Y will positively or negatively impact us getting City of Heroes back are just plain wrong. That die was cast in August of 2012. At this point, my sincere advice is to avoid NCsoft games not as some kind of political statement, but because I believe you'd be wasting your money if you don't. And stop worrying about what NCsoft does or doesn't think about the City of Heroes community, because the harsh truth right now is that it's highly doubtful that they're thinking anything about us.
And no, that's not some nihilistic statement of resignation. Things change. Politics shift. Properties change hands. Once we have new players to work with or a new opportunity presents itself, we'll try again. I'm still 100% certain that at some point, we'll have our city back, with or without NCsoft's help.
