Nobody likes war. Nobody wants war, but somehow, we always find ourselves led to it eventually.
Why? Because a quick look at the history of any war will tell you one thing. One side or the other failed to compromise.
Listen. We've all been holding our fire for too long now. We tried to negotiate, we tried to be civil and we sent NCSoft the equivalent of our "declaration of independence". People, to include TonyV, have gotten not even a reply. King George has basically laughed at us.
Now I know what you're thinking.. NCSoft is a corporation, City of Heroes is their IP and this isn't really war. I get that.
But the answers we have all been shoveled simply don't add up. To quote some politician here, "The Math Doesn't Add Up."
Why doesn't it add up? It's simple really.. NCSoft clearly sees City of Heroes as a non-bread winner. What do they have to lose by selling the IP if they believe it to be unprofitable enough? Why would they be afraid of competition if the game clearly has no clear future to them? If they are afraid of the current team picking it up and doing better with them.. well why couldn't they do better before? SOMEONE made this decision not to sell ultimately, if negotiations ever really did take place. Their head must roll.
So clearly NCSoft HAS NOT exhausted all options, even long before City of Heroes was scheduled to failure. I hope you are still with me here. Because this next point is incredibly important.
They could have done so much more to flourish CoH's success. I realize the support they gave the game was in our best interest at the time, but there are NO BRAINER things they never did do with City of Heroes that even someone like me with no marketing experience whatsoever would see as a no brainer. I don't even have business experience.
But I don't need either of those to see how painfully obvious it is that there is some serious mismanagement going on in NCSoft. They could have spun City of Heroes in incredible ways to make it more appealing and more mainstream, but they don't like to advertise. Advertisement is the blood of American consumerism. I know how much of a contradiction it is to say I have no business or marketing experience.. so what the hell would I know, right? Well I'm a CONSUMER. As far as I'm concerned, the customer knows best. THIS HAS ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS BEEN TRUE AND THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THIS ANYMORE! IT IS THE BUSINESS EQUIVALENT OF A ROGUE GOVERNMENT TAKING AWAY OUR CIVIL RIGHTS! SO LONG AS CONSUMERS REMAIN SILENT THEY HAVE NO POWER!
Something absent in the business world for a long time now. This all but disappeared after the great wars when industrialism took root, and it became more about the bigger, bottom line than the customer. Remember how it was back then? Not anymore. It was as if there was a big greedy land rush after those big wars to take advantage of all the holes in the worlds economy since.
In any case, regarding advertising in America, anyone doing business in America should know this. It's as if they don't understand the concept of spending money on advertisement and the ROI it can bring in if done right.
Someone, somewhere, failed. Badly. Their head must roll.
And someone, somewhere, made the ultimate decision to close City of Heroes for unknown reasons. People make mistakes. Maybe we are wrong, maybe we're not. Maybe we can fix this mistake, in some way ultimately.
Yes, unknown. As far as I'm concerned a rumor is a dime a dozen. We have had no official word on anything. NOT EVEN AN ASKING PRICE FOR THE IP.
You can spin it how you want it, but NCSoft would sell City of Heroes in a heart beat if someone came to them with a $2b offer. You can't deny that. So while $2b is unrealistic, we have to assume there IS infact a price somewhere. But they arn't willing to make that effort.
They arn't even willing to give us the ultimate response that would end this whole thing today.
A simple "Why..?".
It's not their business to tell us customers why. We are told what we are told. To big business, we're sheep with money. That is how most big corporations at the top treat us. The further down you go, the more sympathy we get, but more often than naught, those people are powerless to change things. They're lower management.
Try as they might, the mothership says no. Too bad. We don't care.
Well that is what we've been told, so what do we have to lose? Please, tell me? What do we have to lose? If we're truly a blip on their radar, who will care, right? Wrong.
We CAN make a difference. I'm not advocating negative things in this "war" here. I'm advocating we bring it up to the next level. We must abandon all efforts to negotiate with those who do not have the power to change things.
We have to go after the mothership here and we have to put on our war paint. Buying the Dev's dinner was honorable, akin to losing a squad to save one man in this field we're in. But we have to start showing the "enemy" we mean business and we're a foe to be reckoned with.
It's hard to speak of this war without sounding like I'm advocating bad things from our community, so I'm going to emphasize again, it's not what I'm suggesting.
But WE NEED to think bigger. We need to make a bigger impact.
NCSoft complained we were "disrupting normal business" by our email campaign. This is a double edged sword here. On the one hand, we didn't intend that, but on the other hand, that was sort of our point. To make our voices heard.
See how cleverly they spun that? They made it out to be like we were the problem here, not them. That's PR for you. You would be amazed at what goes on in business today. They FOOL you into retreating back and you don't even know it.
I'm NOT advocating we spam them or mail bomb them or anything.. but we all shut up the moment they told us "Okay okay, please stop."
THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE OR GOOD ENOUGH!
If City of Heroes is a blip on their radar as some have said, then I find it hard to believe we disrupted anything. They could have simply had their IT folk reroute any emails with the word "heroes" to the junk folder. Better yet, the people who's emails we were emailing could have done that in their filter settings.
I have a lot of ideas, but I can't do it alone. I'm sick of standing by and watching nothing happen.
As far as I'm concerned, we are all being blind folded by the clever PR people at NCSoft.
Management at NCSoft has to change. Corporations have to change. We hold incredible power as consumers, not just with our wallets. Our voices alone might be a pin drop in a crowd, but as a crowd, we can be heard.
WE are the consumer. WE are the ones that keep these companies ALIVE. Without US, THEY are nothing. Do not let them for a moment make you think it's the other way around. By doing so, they can pull what they're pulling now.
You think they have the ultimate power in money and influence, that they can shut off our community with the flip of a switch. Well fine, let them. But you know what?
WE ARE ALL STILL HERE. And it's high time someone in Korea heard just how insignificant we are, which is where we need to focus our efforts.
We want their supposedly "failed" "IP" that doesn't fit into their company goals anymore. We want to carry on the legacy because we all see it as something still profitable and worth fighting for.
I for one will not go quietly and twiddle my thumbs while waiting for the next announcement of how they love the game but are not willing to make an effort.
By their lack of their willingness to make an effort, we have the advantage in that we ARE willing to make one for them.
