City of Heroes

[svartalf]

I've been playing this game with the new F2P restrictions lately, and, after two years away, it's changed very much.

If you've played before, I recommend that you take a (free) look around at the scenery. Atlas Park has had a nice overhaul.

The restrictions for the different player types (new, returning and subscriber) are quite complex, and new players are very restricted in what they can do, even compared with returning players. Over time, though, more rights are afforded to them via the veteran reward badges (first one after 1 month, I think).

You get access to travel powers at level 4 nowadays, too.

Also, there is a new update:

New Incarnate Trials coming with City of Heroes' Media Blitz

by Matt Daniel on Oct 18th 2011 5:30PM

Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Patches, Previews, News items, Free-to-play



Paragon Studios has announced that a special City of Heroes Issue 21 content update is on the horizon. The update is known as Media Blitz, but Paragon assures players this is not related to any sort of Journalist power set (though on second thought, maybe it should be). When the update hits, VIP players will be given the opportunity to take part in a brand-new Incarnate Trial known as the TPN Campus.

This new Incarnate Trial will see players infiltrating the TPN Campus in order to confront "a mighty adversary whom [they] will want to keep an eye on." Who is this mysterious rival? Well, there's only one way to find out!

Paragon also notes that a second Incarnate Trial will also come with the update, though the studio isn't quite ready to give the specifics. To top it all off, players "will also be able to unlock brand new abilities for [their] Alpha, Destiny, Interface, and Judgment Incarnate Slots" in order to further progress their characters. Stay tuned for more details on the new Issue 21 update as they become available.

• Source: City of Heroes: Announcing Issue 21 Special Update: Media Blitz!
• More coverage: City of Heroes official site
  

Tags: city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, content, cov, cox, f2p, free-to-play, incarnate-trial, issue-21, media-blitz, ncsoft, paragon, paragon-studios, patch, TPN-campus, update

http://massively.joystiq.com/tag/update/

 

[Mabs]

im back playing this on and off, still a good laugh.
If anyone is playing, or thinking or playing, im on Protector (its a US server originally but they are all clustered now)

 

[svartalf]

I'm playing on Union, so you know where to avoid.

 

[Mabs]

we started playing before it was out in EU
only got 1 50 tho, im slacking

 

[svartalf]

As an on-off player, I'm quite shocked and saddened at this news:

Paragon Studios closing, City of Heroes to sunset before the end of the year [Updated]
by Jef Reahard on Aug 31st 2012 2:45PMSuper-hero, City of Heroes, Business models, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play0


NCsoft is closing Paragon Studios due to a "realignment of company focus and publishing support," according to a blurb just posted on the City of Heroes website.

Community manager Andy Belford says that the superhero MMO will shut down before the end of the year, and recurring billing (as well as Paragon Market purchasing) will be discontinued immediately.

City of Heroes originally launched in 2004 as the world's first superhero MMORPG. Belford goes on to say that more information will be forthcoming over the next few weeks, including a firm cessation date as well as "what you can expect in game."

[Update: NCsoft has told IGN that it is aiming for a November 30th closure date.]

• Source: Announcement
• More coverage: Official site

Tags: breaking, city-of-heroes, city-of-heroes-closing, city-of-heroes-sunset, city-of-villains, closure, coh, cov, cox, f2p, free-to-play, freedom, ncsoft, paragon, paragon-studios, sunset, superhero, superheroes

 

[svartalf]

Andy Belford (some of you might remember him from the Warhammer Online community) seems to be cursed!

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php

Farewell, from all of us at Paragon Studios
Aug31

Farewell, from all of us at Paragon Studios
This morning we announced that Paragon Studios will betaking to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time. In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsofthas made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, alldevelopment on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations tosunset the world's first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of theyear. As part of this, all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Marketpurchasing will be discontinued effective immediately. We will have moreinformation regarding a detailed timeline for the cessation of services andwhat you can expect in game in the coming weeks. The team here at Paragon deserves special praise for allthat we have accomplished over the last 5+ years. These developers are some ofthe most creative and talented people in the gaming industry. By now, we've allbeen given this news internally, but to anyone who may be reading this messageafter the fact; know that your hard work and dedication has not goneunappreciated or unnoticed. To any potential studios looking to grow your team;hire these people. You won't regret it. To our Community, Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You've beenwith us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us tomake City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. Wecouldn't have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the goodthings of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don't dwell on the "how" or the "why", butrather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between theplayers and the development team. Thank you, and I'll see you in the skies, one last time. Andy BelfordCommunity ManagerParagon Studios.

© 2012 NC Interactive, Inc. All rights reserved.
All trademarks referenced herein are the properties of their respective owners.Jobs | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | User Agreement

 

[Aada]

Sad news but i think COH lived long past it's sell by date to be fair it was fun for about 3 weeks then quickly became very boring, i hope these guys can find work though because that's the sad part about this.

 

[old.Osy]

way past due

 

[svartalf]

As he mentions in the post, CoH improved massively in it's latter years. I got the impression that some very talented people were working with a borked system, and that they could really do something special if they had a decent base to work from. I'd like to see a CoH 2.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Superhero mmo's are a good genre, but sadly they're never done that well.

 

[LordjOX]

Sad to say MMO games get shut down, very many people probably had and still have fun with it

 

[svartalf]

City of Heroes fans rally to try to save the game
by Eliot Lefebvre on Sep 5th 2012 8:00PMSuper-hero, City of Heroes, Culture, Events, real-world, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play0


It goes without saying that City of Heroes fans are no strangers to the idea of a heroic effort. Now they face the greatest possible challenge of the game's existence: try to prevent the impending shutdown. A petition has been formed asking for a stay of execution, and fans are convening at a message board dedicated to averting the closure of the industry's first superheroic MMO. The boards contain a number of suggestions and calls for respectful action to make it clear to NCsoft's management how much the game has meant to the players.

The staff of Paragon Studios is just as invested, however. A recent message in-game has confirmed that management is in talks with both NCsoft and investors. Community manager Andy Belford has stressed that these are just talks at the moment and that players shouldn't jump to conclusions. Regardless of the final outcome, it's clear that the game's fanbase will not let the game go quietly, which might be a more earnest show of what the game has meant to players than anything else.

• Source: Anti-shutdown petition
  , Save Paragon City board
  , Announcement of discussions
  , Belford's response
• More coverage: Official Site

Tags: city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, community, community-efforts, cov, cox, f2p, fandom, fans, fighting-shutdown, free-to-play, freedom, ncsoft, paragon, paragon-studios, petition, shutdown, superhero, superheroes

and

City of Heroes fans will hold a protest rally at Atlas Park [Updated]
by Eliot Lefebvre on Sep 6th 2012 7:00PMSuper-hero, City of Heroes, Culture, Events, in-game, News items, Free-to-play0


Odds are good that most City of Heroes fans can't picket NCsoft's corporate headquarters over the game's sudden closing announcement. But fans can picket in the game itself, and that's the plan behind the in-game rally on Saturday at 5 p.m. EDT. The event planners are asking players to congregate en masse on the stairs in Atlas Park on the Virtue server in the hopes of spawning an awe-inspiring number of zone instances.

The rally is followed by a costume contest at 6 p.m. EDT with a similar theme: Players will be making costumes based on Paragon Studios employees -- not the pseudonyms of the employees but the employees themselves. Players are encouraged to put a personal twist on the costumes, but the rules emphasize that mean-spirited costumes are disallowed. If you want to show your solidarity with the game and the studio, head over to the Virtue server this Saturday and get ready to strut your stuff in truly epic fashion.

[Update: Massively will be streaming the event live on our Twitch channel. Join Beau (BeauHindman), Bree (Breetoplay), and Eliot (Gravelines) in the channel and in-game as we watch the fireworks.]

• Source: Unity Rally post (Save CoH board)
  , Unity Rally post (Official boards)
• More coverage: Official Site

Tags: city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, cov, cox, f2p, free-to-play, freedom, in-game-event, in-game-protest, ncsoft, paragon, paragon-studios, player-content, player-rally, player-run-event, protest, save-coh, shutdown, shutdown-notice, superhero, superheroes

 

[Aada]

No chance.

 

[Ctuchik]

Not quite sure what NCsoft is thinking here, CoH wasn't doing that bad at all.

Actually now that i think about it, they are probably trying to push more people to play Aion by closing what is essentially a competing F2P.

 

[svartalf]

City of Heroes fans buy Paragon Studios a meal and proclaim allegiance
by Eliot Lefebvre on Sep 13th 2012 8:00PMSuper-hero, City of Heroes, Culture, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play0


The zeal of the City of Heroes fanbase has not wavered, and fans continue striving to avert the game's shutdown. But it's not just the game that's suffered; the staff at Paragon Studios has been hit with a heavy load as well. TonyV, mastermind behind the movement to save CoH, knew of a restaurant that the studio employees frequented for meals and started a fundraiser to buy the staff a meal. It took three hours to raise $1000, enough for the entire team to have a nice dinner out courtesy of the fans.

Fans are also organizing further events in-game. Two massive joint task force runs are scheduled for September 20th at 9 p.m. EDT and September 22nd at noon EDT. Players are asked to gather in Steel Canyon in record numbers to run Positron's Task Force en masse, showing that the entire playerbase is indeed Positron's Ally. Check the official thread for more details and start clearing some space on your schedule for next week.

[Thanks to Dr. Toerag for the tip!]

• Source: Call to Action: Dinner's on us!
  , Call to Action: Positron's Ally
• More coverage: Official Site

Tags: city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, community, cov, cox, f2p, free-to-play, freedom, in-game-events, ncsoft, paragon, paragon-studios, player-community, player-rally, player-run-events, rally, real-world-events, save-coh, superhero, superheroes, tonyv

 

[Aada]

It's really nice of the fans to pay for the devs to have a meal out

I just checked out the forums and read some of the developer goodbye messages, very sad times, but as the saying goes all good thing must come to an end.

 

[Ormorof]

i loved city of heroes and i played bit on F2P - shame its closing but all good things have to come to an end sadly

 

[old.Tohtori]

Not quite sure what NCsoft is thinking here, CoH wasn't doing that bad at all.

Actually now that i think about it, they are probably trying to push more people to play Aion by closing what is essentially a competing F2P.

It's not just a case of "We'll shut it down 'cause we can" or "Let's try and force people to other games". There's a ton of things going on that they can't even talk about. Not to mention that the sub numbers don't tell the whole story, they might just be out of cash.

They've said that there's no chance of CoH returning and people should accept that. though this is nothing compared to the upcoming wow cancellation wars i have foreseen. It's going to be ugly.

 

[BloodOmen]

One of the many reasons I try to avoid shit that NCsoft is involved with, because they're utter cunts.

 

[Ctuchik]

It's not just a case of "We'll shut it down 'cause we can" or "Let's try and force people to other games". There's a ton of things going on that they can't even talk about. Not to mention that the sub numbers don't tell the whole story, they might just be out of cash.

They've said that there's no chance of CoH returning and people should accept that. though this is nothing compared to the upcoming wow cancellation wars i have foreseen. It's going to be ugly.

The game was popular even before it went F2P, not extremely populated but it still had a very solid subscriber base. A couple of months before it went F2P 3 out of the i think 12 servers were shown as full or close to it, the rest were a wasteland. And if they still couldn't turn a profit even after going F2P then they had a REALLY crappy financial plan going. Like not once did they close or merge servers, all they did was to move the european datacenter to US. So they basically had 9 servers just sitting there costing money they obviously couldn't afford to lose. So why not just force a server transfer and close them down? It probably wouldn't have been enough but that plus some new premium content probably would have been.

That's another thing, as far as i know they released ONE premium adventure pack after going F2P (and it was damn good to), the rest were either new power sets or fluff.

They could have done so much to keep this game going but they deliberately chose not to. And i can only see that as an attempt at preventing their current playerbase from being so thinly spread out.

 

[old.Tohtori]

All those are valid points(as far as we can assume), but also valid points to shut down the 30 man(or woman) team who could be responsible for those things, in other words Paragon studios.

At the end of the day, it wasn't enough to keep paragon going and moving all the CoH stuff from one company to the other is way too much hassle for a moderately small community.

those paychecks and officelights have to come from somewhere

 

[Moriath]

cheques .. damn americanisms

 

[old.Tohtori]

cheques .. damn americanisms

Internet isn't British

 

[Moriath]

Internet isn't British

based on an american Darpa net the modern internet/www was started by Tim Berners Lee

So i think that what your typing on is British

 

[old.Tohtori]

Actually what i'm typing on is Swiss

 

[Ormorof]

you type on cheese?

 

[old.Tohtori]

Logitech keyboard. But if we were talking of cheeses http://www.gffarms.com/index.php/products/cheese/10.html Britain doesn't even make that list

 

[Ormorof]

Logitech keyboard. But if we were talking of cheeses http://www.gffarms.com/index.php/products/cheese/10.html Britain doesn't even make that list

Cheddar:
Country of Origin: England/USA
Milk: Cows Milk
Cheddar is the most widely purchased and eaten cheese in the world.

Britain competes separately in the Cheese world just like in football it seems, that said i find most cheddar to be quite dull, but the varieties are endless! had some amazing cheddar with black pepper in it once nom nom noms

 

[svartalf]

I don't understand why so many (mainly) southerners think eating foreign cheese rather than exploring the (fantastic) domestic varieties makes them more refined.

 

[svartalf]

Some questions answered by the CoH devs:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ocOo69mXIQ8HthabNe1F4X1EcZcSDwZFEE9sT8WSBc4/edit?pli=1