Duuk

Rookie. I sat out a _2_ year forum ban on Paradox. But when you've been registered on a forum for 18 years stuff like that happens. Fun side effect of that: When the HC servers came online, someone necro-posted in a thread of mine about City of Heroes and I got a notification telling me that my computer specs sucked... on a thread from 2006. Yup. 13 year thread necromancy for the win.

Bingo. The doomsayers in this thread are, for once, the ones that aren't actually in touch with reality. Because if NCSoft wasn't interested in what the HC team had to offer, the cease and desist would already have been sent and the servers would have already been shut down either by the HC team themselves or by a direct C+D to the host ISPs. Which means, by textbook logic, that no C+Ds were sent. Which means that NCSoft didn't send them. And since the HC project has been about as public as a brand new MMO launch and about as stealthy as an nrg/nrg blaster.... ...I'm forced to put on my Sherlock Holmes... Once you eliminate all of the impossibilities, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The truth therefore is that NCSoft sees some value in negotiating with the HC team, which means they feel like the HC project has value to NCSoft. Do I _know_ what that value is? No, I'm no in the negotiations. Can I make some reasonable guesses? Yes, and I've done so several times in this thread. Could I be mistaken about several of them? Yes. Could the entire thing fall apart at the negotiating table and result in shutdown anyway? Yes. But I'm willing to bet this story has a reasonably happy ending. Because otherwise it already would have ended. You know why? Because ending it in violent shutdown and death was the EASY solution and NCSoft already skipped past the easy solution.

Trust me when I say that people will never, ever let go of their biases, not matter how many facts you put in front of them. Especially since there were two very public things that used the word "Titan". You're howling into the wind.

Also, they seem to be communicating with us the "why hasn't there been a patch in 6 weeks?" Because they've been busy behind the scenes figuring out who is going to pay for the servers, and they apparently have reason to believe it might not be them, and that they might have an entirely different set of tools to use to patch the game with, build content with, etc. The fact that they announced it means one of a few things, so let me summarize for you: Fact: There are talks going on between HC and NCSoft. We can assume that is a fact because it has been stated as fact. Assumption: The talks are going well and the HC team feels like a positive outcome is likely which will allow them to operate in a positive, constructive manner. Now, that is an assumption on my part, and here's my logic. If the talks are NOT going well, and NCSoft is jerking them around, you'd have to assume that the HC team are collossaly stupid to have gone public already. However, the fact that they have done literally everything right so far leads me to believe that they are not, in fact, a fundamentally stupid group of people. Given that I believe they are NOT a fundamentally stupid group of people, I will assume that they have some form of legal counsel involved, that the negotiations are at a stage where counsel has advised them they can leak that the negotiations are occurring, and they are likely to bear fruit. Is it possible that my assumption is wrong and that the HC team is being fleeced? Yes, it is. I know plenty of people you would assume are very intelligent who are, in fact, patent morons. But in this case I'm erring on the side of "not fundamentally stupid."

Any outcome that resulted in NCSoft officially deciding to allow 1 set of servers to exist, and thus allow the community to finally breathe easy and have a true home and not have to live underground in fear of sudden deletion in the middle of the night, was ALWAYS going to end with the other servers being forced to hide even harder or fold. There was never a way around that.

Dangit, I knew I forgot one important point: With the code being out there, HC being blessed as the "Officially Licensed" City of Heroes servers would actually _reinforce_ NCSoft's trademark and copyrights, because it moves it from being abandoneware to being "actively developed". Which means every time they fire off a cease and desist to any of the other servers, they can include the paragraph "the City of Heroes Intellectual Property is actively and exclusively licensed to Homecoming, Inc, a Delaware Corporation, for their use". Which means that allowing the HC team to use the City of Heroes code actually STRENGTHENS NCSoft's hand against everyone else.

What's different now is that 7 years have passed an entirely different economic model for f2p games, community interaction, and likely an entirely new management and marketing team are in place. In addition, we have literally NO IDEA what NCSoft might be looking at now vs. 7 years ago, we have no idea what Titan Network may have been asking for (for example, most people familiar seem to suggest that Titan Network was asking to outright buy the CoX IP from NCSoft) vs. what the HC team might be asking (IP License and authority to operate a set of servers, improve upon the existing code, and perhaps offering to run any IP story changes by NCSoft's marketing team). I can tell you that in these negotiations, the details matter. The details matter A LOT.

Which is why my guess (and I'm not involved) is that the negotiations will be: NCSoft gives their stamp of approval to HC, making HC the "Official City of Heroes" legacy servers, which protects NCSoft's IP/Copywrite/Trademark because it is actively in use AND acknowledged by both parties, so they can still cease and desist everyone else. HC is required to send monitoring reports with player statistics to NCS. There will probably be restrictions on Marvel/DC characters again to protect NCSoft, since HC will be Official. The HC team will be able to develop mostly how they want, but they might have to get minor approval if they want to do wild stuff to the IP (kill off named characters, etc). NCSoft will decide to make a City of Heroes 2 based on the success of the HC team.

NCSoft taking over the Homecoming servers and making them official, depending on how that works, may not be a negative outcome. 7 years ago, microtransactions were in their infancy. Today, a f2p version of CoX that had new costume sets coming out every month or two at $3.99 would be a perfectly viable business model. Don't let the falling skies of the past make you forget that the world has changed since CoX shut down.

See my post above. I own a business, and I've been in sales, marketing, and politics a long, long time. The HC team is offering to do ALL of the work to basically run a trial balloon and run a City of Heroes retro-server with all of the liability implied and all NCSoft has to do is grant them the exclusive license to a dead IP. What does NCSoft get out of it? They require the HC team to send usage and player count reports monthly (or even realtime) to NCSoft so NCSoft can gauge the interest level in City of Heroes over a 6/9/12 month period. If the interest level is there compared to current Steam games, then NCSoft can decide, based on ACTUAL PLAYER COUNT plus projections of new users that would be enticed by a new CoX2 engine release, to re-monetize and update to create a sequel. In short, the Homecoming team is a free test marketing team for NCSoft AND by giving them the EXCLUSIVE license when they smack the cease and desist on others they have an even stronger argument in court that the IP and Code has NOT been abandoned but is in CURRENT MAINTAINED DEVELOPMENT by an OFFICIALLY LICENSED AND APPROVED team. It's legal manna from heaven.

I'd be much more willing to believe that NCSoft would be using the HC team as a free-or-close-to-free test balloon for CoX2 to see if it would be worth investing in a new version. By making an "official" City of Heroes server, smacking down all unofficials and publicly backing 1 official server they can put an actual gauge on the interest level on monetizing their IP. The fact that it has knock-on "goodwill" effects is secondary. I mean, if I was their PR department I'd spin it as "We're so excited to have a player/fan community to work with bringing City of Heroes back to the fans!" complete with cupcakes and confetti, but my real reasons would be testing the waters for "How can I make money on what I thought was a dead IP?"

Actually, that sounds VERY good. NCSoft has no REASON to negotiate with the Homecoming team. They could just slap a Cease and Desist bomb on them and walk away. Instead, they're negotiating with them as an entity, which means they believe that the HC team has something to offer. That's a huge positive. Huge. As a small business owner that went through a lawsuit that involved 6-figure sums when I split off from my previous employer, I can tell you that "negotiation = good". Since everyone has been doing the Chicken Little act, let me give some OTHER possible scenarios: The Homecoming Team becomes the OFFICIAL NCSoft approved City of Heroes team. ALL OF THE OTHER SERVERS GET CEASE AND DESIST letters and any players on those servers are encouraged to come here because this is the official City of Heroes APPROVED servers. The Homecoming Team gets OFFICIAL ACCESS to the original code and development tools under a license. Things they may have to concede and give up: Homecoming GMs go back to policing copywritten/trademarked characters (which may be as simple as banning a list of names) to protect NCSoft/Homecoming. The in-game advertising goes live again and advertises NCSoft projects on billboards. Some form of monthly report on user data and project status gets sent to NCSoft. And that last one isn't a bad thing anyway, since the HC team can sign their names to it and show off their skills and may get hired by NCSoft for in-house project management or design teams. Including, say, New City of Heroes. NCSoft may even agree to host the servers (for them, a nominal expense) to gain oversight of the project. Then they make it a 3 year trial agreement while they gauge the interest in New City of Heroes at a cost of $10k a month (which is nothing) and have advertising to users AND have a volunteer staff. There is almost no downside.

The only thing without storage is recipes, for which I am eternally sorrowful.

But I would kill for an option to select suit-coats for my thug MM pets.

Muahahahahah finally got in under the wire this month!

I guess I'm weird. I don't have the inf to spend on IOs for all my alts, so most of my enhancement slots are empty.

Well, my goal was to move things away from Liberty, since she's a social hang-out and always has been. My "long term" Quality of Life goals if the devs are planning on improving the game include making sure every Zone is self-sufficient so that all story arcs and contacts are zone-contained (each contact missions stay in their zone and lead to each other under you've out-leveled the zone and THEN breadcrumb you to the next zone), story arcs that follow your background chain properly, etc. But a big start involves relieving congestion in Atlas, and since we can each have our own SG, my goal was to add a way to bypass Atlas while leveling. All of these have been great suggestions!

The new forum layout is better than sex with a trained professional. But now I need to pick a forum avatar.

As a nice, fun way to alleviate the stress on Poor Ms. Liberty... How about the Supergroup Mission Computer gets re-purposed as a Mission Architect access interface? Then solo/small group supergroups can use their base as a be-all-and-end-all place to meet up, Ms. Liberty and Atlas gets a total strain reduction, everybody wins!

Over 60 views and nobody has this list... So, um... maybe there isn't one? Could someone make one? I don't have nearly enough information, but I bet someone way smarter than I am has this in an xml spreadsheet already...

I was away from my keyboard, in the time it took me to read the message, grab my wallet, open a browser, and click the link, I missed it. Obviously, you guys need to increase expenses so the donation window can stay up a little longer. Maybe add a server this month?

I may be crazy or suffering from early onset dementia (hence the MadCow) but did there not used to be a guide/spreadsheet/list of what enemy factions dropped which dual-origin and single-origin enhancements so players would know which missions/story arcs were the "best" ones to do based on origins? I'm almost certain someone had a spreadsheet but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

I would kill for a way to adjust the "teleport in" facing for rez and base entrance items and have an arrow on top so when we rotate them it shows which way the toon will be facing when they pop in. It would be SO SEXY.

I am in love and now want to play this game. This is so much better than my version.

HERO!